


A Kiss For Good Luck

by lillpon



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Coping Methods, But With Angst, Canon amputation, Canon minor character deaths, Emma/Neal - Freeform, F/M, Just My Luck AU, Killian/Eloise, Killian/Milah, Mentions of child neglect, Modern AU, a bit of violence, because if you don't know me you will now, just a tad, mentions of child abuse, mentions of past domestic abuse, other ships mentioned will be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 50,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28494378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillpon/pseuds/lillpon
Summary: So this is the story of one born lucky, and one born unlucky. Fate will keep making them cross paths, but is it to bring them together, or to test them? Captain Swan AU of the 2006 filmJust My Luck.[Complete]
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones & Captain Nemo, Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan, Snow Queen | Ingrid | Sarah Fisher & Emma Swan
Comments: 80
Kudos: 58
Collections: Captain Swan Movie Marathon





	1. Emma Swan, October 23rd 1983 – August 11th 1995

**Author's Note:**

> Have you seen the 2006 film _Just My Luck_ starring Lindsay Lohan and Chris Pine??? No??? Well it’s a light-hearted rom-com which I took inspiration from and as is my wont, I turned it into angst! The inspiration from the film is very loose, aside from the main idea. There will be lots of angst here, but it will have a happy ending! I’m so excited to share this with you!
> 
> The chapters will vary in length and each one will follow parts of Emma and Killian's lives, side by side. To avoid causing confusion, each chapter will be titled after the time it corresponds to and for whom. The first two chapters are quite short, but updates will follow soon :3
> 
> I would advise you to not watch the film yet, if you haven't or if you don't remember what it's about. Don't spoil yourself for the ending of this story ;)
> 
> As shown by the tags, this story contains various sensitive topics. Each chapter that contains them will begin with a note indicating which is referenced in it.

One could say that Emma Swan is born unlucky. It depends, of course, on one's definition of luck, but once she learns what the word means, she quite identifies with it. Abandoned at birth, no records to speak of, no family adopting her as she grows older.

Her future doesn't seem bright. Half-done education due to moving schools every few months or so, and without a steady parental figure, she isn't inspired to think on ambitions. "What do you wanna be when you grow up?" is not a question she hears often.

And not that it's the worst that she's had, but more often than not she will step on dog poop, bird poop will land on her, and if it's raining it's absolutely sure she'll end up soaking wet. No umbrella she ever has holds more than a few minutes before breaking apart in her small hands.

Somehow, the fact that she's an orphan always goes around, in every school she goes, and she becomes a target. There are no friends, just kids who don't bully her too much and are a company. And then she moves schools and she has to meet new kids all over again. In her case, knowing a lot of people is not having any positive effect.

Rules mean little to her. So when she's eleven, instead of asking permission from her foster mother, she sneaks out of the house to go to the birthday party of one of her least annoying classmates, who was obviously guilted into inviting her. Emma sits quietly, deciding to join in a game of spin the bottle.

The rest of her classmates are dancing or chatting, she doesn't know anyone's name in the game. But it's one certain boy with dark hair and bright eyes that catches her attention when it's his turn to spin.

The bottle stops, facing her.

The boy smiles at her, and Emma suddenly feels... hungry? But the boy is coming closer, so she closes her eyes and holds her breath. She hears the girl next to her whisper an “Ooohh!”, then feels a quick kiss on her lips.


	2. Killian Jones, October 24th 1983 -  August 11th 1995

Killian Jones is, in many ways, as lucky as it gets. His mother likes to joke that it's her Irish descent having its effect. From the time he can understand what money is, he finds coins while out on walks with her. Before he's even five years old, more than three agents have contacted his parents, asking if they would be interested to have Killian star in commercials, and eventually they have him be in one - about marmalades and how beneficial they are even for little kids. No-one expects it to go well, but even three years later, they still get a certain amount of royalties.

"College fund," his mother says and winks.

Killian is still too young to decipher the bitter expression his father has at her words.

He starts school and once again, he's the star. A good student, popular and beloved both by teachers and classmates. An early prom king, his teachers say jokingly. 

In his young, innocent mind, he doesn't ever remember something bad occurring to him.

It's that same innocent mind that thinks that things will always go this way.

When he is eleven years old, he enters a lottery organized by his school. And of course, he wins first prize; two weeks of summer school in Boston, all expenses paid for him and one guardian.

He hates to leave Liam behind, but the idea of two whole weeks abroad, just he and his mama, is making everything else seem insignificant.

Of course, in that same summer school, he makes lots of friends. One of them invites him to her birthday party just two days before their return trip.

It's at that party that a shy blond girl sits with them when they play spin the bottle. Strange. He thought he'd met all the children at this party, but he doesn't know this girl's name. A strange feeling sets in his stomach when he spins the bottle and it stops at her. 

No-one reacts differently; it's like any other spin. But Killian's stomach feels tight when he reaches over and leaves a quick kiss on the girl's lips.


	3. Emma Swan, August 11th 1995 – October 31st 2000

The boy settles back on his seat after the kiss, smiling as he looks down. There are a few giggles around the circle, but as Emma goes to grab the bottle to spin it, the birthday girl's mother calls her name. She freezes and turns, looking at her and the two policemen behind her.

She never gets the boy's name. The police take her away, though they're quite nice to her, considering she was caught sneaking out. The one sitting on the passenger seat of the cruiser even turns back and asks her if she's okay.

Emma doesn't answer. Sarah, her current foster mother, has been one of the calmest foster parents she's ever lived with; in the six months Emma has stayed with her, Sarah didn't raise her voice once, and when Emma's restless, Sarah sits down to talk with her instead of simply putting her in time-out. But this is the first time Emma has snuck out – in this home at least – so she fears she's gonna get the scolding of her life.

Her hands are fidgeting on her sides as the officers knock on Sarah's door. Emma keeps her head down, so she's surprised when Sarah sounds calm and, dare she say, _relieved_.

Sarah thanks the policemen and they leave without any further comment, unlike how Emma feared.

“Come in, dear,” Sarah says and walks to the living room.

Is that it? Will she just get a talking-to instead of a grounding?

Sarah sits down on the sofa and pushes a cup of hot cocoa towards Emma's side.

Emma frowns at the cinnamon stick in the cup. She's not used to foster parents caring for the things she likes. Sarah places a folder on the table, and before she can even say anything, Emma's face falls. She wants to bolt for the room she stays in, grab her few belongings and run away – again.

"What is it, Emma?" Sarah asks.

"That folder. It has the same seal as all the folders the social workers have when they take me away."

Sarah looks at it perplexed, then back at Emma, and her face relaxes.

Without even knowing why, Emma's face relaxes too.

"No, Emma. You couldn't be more wrong." Sarah's face breaks into a smile. "I've filled out the paperwork to adopt you."

Emma could swear it's the best – if not the only good – news she's ever received. She doesn't hold herself back. She squeezes Sarah in a hug, tears running from her eyes. Despite Sarah's positives compared to other foster parents, Emma didn't dare hope she'd get so lucky as to have her as her forever mom.

"I love you," she says.

Emma never dreamed her life could be like this. Sarah gets her to a good school, where Emma makes friends, finally learns on a steady schedule, explores her hobbies and interests... and above all, she's happy.

It's the first time in her life that it means something to her, to celebrate her birthday and all kinds of holidays. It's the first time someone bakes her a birthday cake, that someone cares to help her find or make a cool Halloween costume, that someone wants to take time off just to spend time with her, to play, to learn, to get to know the real Emma.

Not that she minds, of course, that no more than three days at a time go by that she doesn't find money on the street. From nickels to dollar bills to – just that one time – a hundred dollar bill, she's happy she's exchanged dog poop for that.

And she knows, she knows for _sure_ that Sarah loves her. Sarah asks how her day was, she makes sure to make her favourite meals at least once a week, they go on trips and vacations, and slowly, while before she'd never dreamed she would have that chance, Emma finally feels her future is looking bright.

In her junior year in high school, she's a candidate for spring fling queen. She and her girlfriends spend a whole week in the stores, searching for the perfect dress.

At this point, she's not even surprised to learn she won. She doesn't even know Graham, the spring fling king, but they spend a wonderful night dancing together and chatting. That same night, she stays up too long talking on the phone with Lily, her best friend, about the whole dance.

“Did you kiss him?!” Lily asks.

“No! I don't even know him!”

“You didn't have to! He was so hot!”

“But, Lily-”

“Was it him? Was he like, shy or something?”

“No, not at all. He was talking and joking and it was all fun, but... I don't know. Should I have made a move?”

“Didn't you want to?”

Emma pauses. “No. Not really?”

She hears Lily sigh. “Do you _still_ want to?”

“I don't know. I don't think so?” After a short pause, Emma smiles and says, “Are you interested in him?”

“No, jeez. But I would have kissed him if I were you.”

“I don't know, Lily. I didn't feel like it.”

“It's okay, Em. That wasn't a rule for the king and queen. But didn't you feel anything?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, you know, blushing, feeling butterflies in your stomach...”

“Butterflies?”

“Yeah, you know, like you're hungry, or too full...”

“That sounds weird,” Emma says with a smile.

“You've never felt it before? I've known you that long and I never learned that?”

“You're usually the one chatting about boys.”

“Ugh, yeah. Anyway, when you feel it you'll know it.” She laughs. “And I'll be here to hear _all_ about it!”

After the call, Emma lies on her bed, tired from all the dancing and jumping around, thinking about Lily. She was also adopted, so they connected immediately. However, there has been a feeling lately that Lily is keeping things from her, while Emma barely ever has a filter on when sharing her thoughts and feelings with her.

Oh, well. They've known each other for years. What's the worst that can happen?

A month before her seventeenth birthday, she feels extra lucky and enters a lottery, asking Sarah to issue passports for both of them. Her best gift comes on October 23rd, her birthday itself; a trip to London for two people for Halloween. On a villa.

The villa's owner gets such a liking to Emma that she invites her and Sarah to her Halloween party on the nearby villa.

"Half the house will be for us, the adults, and the rest will be for my son and his pals, the teens. But no drinking, young lady," the owner says, though the smile never leaves her lips.

Emma has always wanted to dress like a princess; for this occasion, she picks one of a zombie variety. She's not surprised to see her dress, torn and covered in fake blood as it is, is a hit. When she enters the party, she doesn't know anyone. Within two hours, she knows everyone by name. Sarah is having her fun with the adults, and Emma has the time of her life.

As she dances with her new friends, she spots a newcomer; a boy, probably her age, dressed like a pirate, with an eyepatch that is probably placed over the wrong eye and a hook for a hand and all.

And so very handsome.

“Who's that?” she asks one of her new friends.

“Dunno. Never seen him before.”

“He's cute.”

“He looks a bit lost. It doesn't seem like he knows anyone here.”

Emma hums. “I was only invited two days ago Maybe all he needs is a push. I'm gonna go dance with him.” She smiles.

“Good luck,” the girl tells her as Emma walks to him.

His smile, cocky at first, turns more shy the more steps she takes towards him.

"Wanna dance?" she tells him.

The lights are low, and they're slow dancing, and she could swear those piercing blue eyes are familiar, with the way they stare down at her. He even moves his eyepatch out of the way, as if he wants to look at her better. There's something swirling in her stomach, and she briefly wonders if she overate from the buffet, before her thoughts quickly fly back to the boy's eyes. The music goes softer, and before she even knows what she's doing, she rises on her toes and kisses him.


	4. Killian Jones, August 11th 1995 – October 31st 2000

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prepare thyselves, here be angst. And warnings: minor character death, cancer, child abandonment, and some minor child abuse.

Killian doesn't expect to get the girl's name from two policemen who were searching for her. They say she was sneaking out and that they need to get her back home.

He looks at her as she's leaving; her head is low and she doesn't look back at him.

He steps away from the children still playing. He's not in the mood anymore, he's feels more like... eating something... or running to the bathroom to puke. He's not really sure.

He's certain he knows his first hardship on the difficult trip back to England. While still at the airport in Boston, his mother keeps saying something about an "immigration office" as she talks to his father on a payphone, eventually hanging up angrily. She apologizes to Killian and tells him they'll figure things out soon.

They miss their flight. He's too tired to calculate but he's sure they stay in the airport for more than a day, hardly getting any sleep on the hard chairs of the lobby. He's lucky he's got his mama's lap to rest his head on, at least.

He spends a few good hours trying to remember the girl's name; Liam would be so curious to find out about his younger brother's first kiss, and he can't even remember her name! Anna? Enya? No, he would've remembered such a name.

After even more hours they reach home tired, unwashed and hungry, and for the first time he hears his parents fight.

That same night, still shaken by hearing the fight, he goes to his brother's room. They just sit together, looking at Liam's star light that projects constellations on the ceiling. He thought that, upon coming back, he'd spend hours telling him everything about the summer school, and Boston, and having his first kiss, and flying on a plane... instead they just sleep next to each other, and for the first time he understands why some of his friends had said that they sleep with their parents after a nightmare.

That night is, actually, the first time Killian ever has a nightmare.

It only takes a week. He would later consider it the calm before the storm. Calm, or more like quiet, because his friends don't talk to him much, which he interprets as jealousy because he had the trip and they didn't.

But the storm hits exactly one week after they've gotten back; his mother passes out while coming home from work. Some long hours of Liam babysitting him later, his father brings her home from the hospital.

He's never seen their faces so saddened before.

He has so many questions, ones that fifteen-year-old Liam apparently doesn't. Like, what cancer is, and why it's bad that it's fast-acting. What is chemo and why is it too late for it to have effect? Why does mama have to stay in bed so much?

"How long will you stay in bed?" he asks that out loud.

"A few months," his father says.

Another question; why is mama not talking at all?

"And then you'll be up, mama?"

She looks at him, and tears fall from her eyes. She stands up slowly, sits between her two sons on the couch and holds them close.

Killian cannot explain it, but somehow, he knows. Somehow, the knowledge sets itself in his mind as if it were always there.

That October 24th is the most underwhelming birthday he has had. He's so used to big parties and celebrations and gifts, that a simple cake shared between the four of them around the quiet table feels out of place for a birthday.

They never tell him anything, but it doesn't come as a surprise when two weeks before Christmas his father starts preparing a black attire for himself and the boys.

He takes one black dress for mama, too, though Killian knows someone else will put it on her.

The house is silent when they leave for the funeral, and it feels even more silent when they come back.

Killian has a feeling that it will never stop being that.

This night it's Liam who comes into Killian's room and sleeps next to him.

Time becomes a blur; it's one of the days where Liam sleeps next to him that Killian wakes up early, and father isn't home. He doesn't worry much, he just tries to spend time on the TV. Only one channel has signal, and though normally Killian hates listening to the news, he prefers that over the silence now.

He remembers it's a Saturday, but father still hasn't come home when Liam wakes up and takes up making breakfast for the two of them. Killian offers to help, but he burns his hand trying to make an omelette and Liam, with a patience Killian doesn't think he deserves, takes over for him.

Had Killian known more, he would have realized that on any other day he would be getting stressed and angry. Instead, he feels empty – almost as if anticipating the news that, by two days later, become a reality.

Their father left them. He took clothes and personal documents, withdrew all the money they had in the bank, including Killian's and Liam's college funds, and apparently sold their home two days before he left.

Killian didn't cry at mama's funeral. He didn't cry when the social worker confirmed that father had left by his own choice and left them with nothing. But when they tell him that there aren't any foster families that will take both brothers together, Killian breaks down sobbing.

He can't... he can't lose him too.

"I'll visit, brother," Liam says, his voice shaking. "I will call you every day."

Killian trembles in his brother's arms. He'd rather not have a home than not have him right now. He's all he has left.

But the social workers don't seem to care. They pull Killian away – and damn Liam, why isn't he holding onto him? Why is he letting go?! – and put the two brothers in two separate cars.

It's three long but empty weeks before the phone rings and for the first time, it's Killian they ask for.

Mr. Silver doesn't look happy when Killian reaches the phone – not that he ever looks happy when Killian is concerned. He gives him the receiver with a frown.

"Don't take too long," he whispers at him and Killian fights back a shiver.

"Hello?"

"Killian!"

"Oh, Liam! Where are you? Are you coming? I miss you."

"I know, brother. I'm sorry. They took me to Bristol."

"Bristol?! How?! That's too far away!"

"I know. Maybe I can convince someone to drive me to London."

"I miss you. Please come."

"I miss you too. I'll try."

"Come where, Jones?" Mr. Silver's strict voice is heard from the other room.

"Bollocks," Killian whispers.

"Killian!"

"Oh, shut up. You have no idea how much that guy curses."

Mr. Silver appears in the hall right in front of Killian. "I asked you a question, Jones."

"It's- it's my brother, sir."

"You're not answering my question."

Killian swallows hard. "He- he said he may visit one day."

Mr. Silver snorts. "Not in here. Make it quick, now. I'm waiting for a call."

He doesn't leave, instead he stands there, arms crossed, and this time Killian can't stop the shiver down his spine.

"Killian," Liam's calm voice comes from the phone.

"Yes?"

"Is that man treating you right?"

"Yeah, kinda."

"Does he _hit_ you?"

Killian grabs the phone tightly. He's never heard his brother's voice like this. "No." _Not yet_ , he thinks. He's seen how he pulls at the bigger boys' ears when they aren't behaving.

He chances a glance at Mr. Silver, regretting it immediately. His eyebrows are raised suspiciously and he makes a gesture with his hand towards the receiver.

"I gotta go. Try to- please." He doesn't dare say much with that man so close to him.

"I will. I promise, brother. I love you."

"Me too. Goodnight."

He doesn't get a goodnight back. Mr. Silver grabs the receiver and hangs up.

"Move," he says, picking it back up and dialing.

It takes two more months for Liam to actually visit, but Silver doesn't let them go further than the playground a couple blocks away, with him sitting on the bench across from the swings where the brothers sit.

Killian is still young, but his mind is hardening enough to start knowing better. Silver is not suitable for a foster parent, but maybe it's not a coincidence that the other two boys in the house have already sullied criminal records.

"You're not gonna be like them," Liam says.

"Can't I come to Bristol too? Isn't there room in your house?"

"I've talked to the social worker, but I don't know how this works. She says it's not that easy."

"You're lucky," Killian says, looking down at his feet. "My social worker won't answer my calls." _When I_ do _get time for a phone call_ , he thinks.

"Hey, I'm still here. We may be far, but we're both still here. We'll get through this. My foster father said that when I turn sixteen he may let me help around his brother's gas station. I'll make some money, I'll find a job, and when I turn eighteen, I'll do my damnedest to get custody of you."

Killian feels tears well up in his eyes, but he quickly blinks them away. He can't let Silver see him like this.

Empty weeks turn into empty months, and those turn into empty years. Killian changes foster homes, never getting closer to Liam's, but eventually he gets in some kind of trouble – biting back at school bullies, staying out late, getting caught with alcohol – and he always finds himself back to Silver's house.

It's there that he feels the most empty, the most lost. It's only Liam's occasional phone calls, less occasional visits, and the hope that he'll get a job and get them a home for themselves that keeps Killian afloat.

There are times he wonders how things could turn out like this. He used to be happy. Things used to go well for him, he had a bright future... he had a family, a home. Now he's resorted to just waiting until he's old enough to take some control over his life, no matter how little.

And the more time goes by, the more he feels his patience running out.

Nothing is permanent in his life, nothing is stable. Homes come and go. Liam comes and goes. Having only a miserable plastic bag to keep his stuff in, most of the drawings he makes to pass the time end up in the trash. His mother was the one who encouraged him to draw and hang his pieces all over his bedroom walls. Keeping them now only serves as a reminder of what he's lost.

The only thing he actually treasures is the photo of himself, Liam, and their mother, which he managed to grab just in time while the social workers were urging him to pick up only the essentials from his childhood home. As it almost was victim of being ripped to pieces by whatever bully targeted him, he now keeps it in the most uninteresting place he could have thought of; his math notebook.

After turning eighteen, Liam finally moves in London, but he's working two jobs and only has time once a week, for a few hours, to visit Killian.

Killian doesn't celebrate his fifteenth birthday. Not that Silver would care if Killian had asked for a celebration. And when, just two days later, the police call him to come recognize his brother's body after he was killed in a work accident, Killian finds the lack of celebration so fitting that he actually bursts into laughter. He laughs and laughs until his chest starts hurting and he's on his knees, shaking but unable to call for any help.

Silver is still talking to the police on the phone, shouting at him to stop being a brat. It's Ed, the only boy older than Killian in the house, that kneels down to him and slaps him, getting him out of his hysterics.

Killian struggles to hold on, but his resolve breaks into pieces when the doctor raises the sheet covering Liam's body. He doesn't have any care left about Silver seeing him crying and sobbing like this.

One last broken hope he had, that Silver might give a damn after seeing him so devastated, is gone too after that.

It's just that one time; for the next two years that he stays under that horrible man's roof, he cultivates a cool, careless exterior, while his pillow soaks his silent tears almost every night.

At least, Silver doesn't care much for Killian causing trouble, like trespassing, breaking curfew, or even drinking. He just gives him the ceremonious slap and goes on with his day.

So Killian doesn't think too much before deciding to sneak out and into the Halloween party on the other side of the city that Ella – or Cruella, as the kids in the house call her – the first girl in the house in years, suggests they go to. With his meager savings he puts together a pirate costume, puts a thick line of black around his eyes with the eye pencil he borrowed from Cruella, and together they hot-wire the first car they find and drive to the extravagant villa where the party is at.

At first glance, Cruella scoffs and searches around the house for booze.

"I can't believe there's adults here. What was the point?!"

It's a good thing Killian got an eyepatch. The pencil irritates his eye and he has to wash it off in the bathroom, then cover his reddened, smudged eye with the patch. His other eye isn't done and the eyepatch looks weird on the side it's on, but the lights are so low that probably no-one will notice. He doesn't expect anyone to look at him long enough to notice, anyway.

Like any other party, he feels like an outsider, but he doesn't care. He dances by himself while occasionally looking around to check if Cruella found the alcohol. Instead he spots a girl, probably his age and dressed as a zombie princess, who is looking at him. Like, _looking_ looking.

He doesn't connect the feeling in his stomach with the one he'd felt at that game of spin the bottle so many years ago. He's so older, his mind burdened with such darker thoughts, that right now it's confusing to feel an unknown emotion that isn't scraping away at his soul.

And the girl is _walking_ to him, just as a ballad comes on.

"Wanna dance?" she says.

He just offers his hand. His mouth feels so dry he fears his voice won't come out if he tries to say anything.

He heard the term 'butterflies in one's stomach' before, but he had no clue it would feel like this, so overwhelmingly confusing but making him happy at the same time. The girl is smiling at him as they slow dance, and he reckons, so is he. From the corner of his eye he spots Cruella, holding a cup that most definitely doesn't have a plain fizzy drink or juice in it, but he can't tear his gaze away from the girl. There's something familiar about her bright eyes, whose colour he can't decipher in the red and purple lights.

Her expression is soft; her smile falls, but not out of any sadness. The song draws to an end, and suddenly her lips are on his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone should probably take Killian away from me. I tend to not treat him well until I decide it's finally time he had a break...
> 
> Next update will come on Saturday, then from next week I will update every Tuesday and Friday :)


	5. Emma Swan, October 31st 2000 – October 19th 2011

Emma pulls back at the sound of a whistle next to her.

"Nice catch, Captain," a girl dressed like Cruella de Vil says to the boy, but he just shakes his head, annoyed at her.

"Ignore her," he tells Emma. "She's just pissed that there's too many adults around," he says as he gives the girl a pointed glare.

The girl just shrugs and walks away.

Emma keeps her arms around the boy's neck and they keep rocking to the rhythm of the next song. Just as she's about to ask him for his name, she sees Sarah and the owner of the two villas run to the front door.

"Excuse me," she tells the boy and lets go. "I'll be right back."

She follows the two women outside and gasps when she sees the bright, wild flames burning inside their rented villa. She tries to step forward towards Sarah, but she trips and falls, scraping her arm on a sharp rock on the ground.

She's not bleeding much; she keeps her arm hidden, feeling lucky she has her zombie makeup, as she stands awkwardly by while the villa's owner is venting out her anger over her destroyed property at Sarah. Emma is too tired and too shocked to understand whose fault it is and who will have to pay for the damages.

Everything they'd brought with them was burned in the fire, including Emma's passport. Sarah says they were lucky enough that her own wallet and papers were in her purse. Early the next morning, one Emma dressed as a way too messy zombie princess and one Sarah dressed as a very tired witch with a broken hat check into a hotel, waiting for the embassy to open so they can arrange for Emma's new travel documents.

They're flying back two days later, and after a long, seemingly endless to Emma trip, she looks at the queue at passport control as if it's the final obstacle to a good night's sleep.

Sarah lets her go first, and though the security guard takes a little more time checking her passport than Emma feels comfortable with, he eventually allows her to pass. Emma picks up her rucksack, still slightly mourning the clothes and the other stuff she lost in the fire, crosses over and turns to look at Sarah.

Sarah walks to the checkpoint. After checking her passport, the security guard picks up a walkie-talkie and says something to it while staring at Sarah.

Sarah turns to look at her, worried, and Emma feels a shiver run down her spine.

Two other guards appear and walk up to Sarah, while another one walks to Emma.

Emma freezes; she watches as the two guards lead Sarah away, while she's turning her head back to look at Emma before they urge her through a door. She seems to be calling Emma's name.

“What's happening?” Emma says, still staring at the closed door. They didn't even let her cross. “Where are you taking her?”

“Just follow me. It's a matter of security.”

“You have to tell me! What happened?!”

The guard stays silent and simply walks forward. He leads Emma into an office, offering her water and a sandwich. Emma takes a few gulps of water – her mouth feels dry as sand already – but her stomach is too tight for her to manage even one bite.

Many long, tiring hours later, a woman dressed in a suit approaches Emma. The badge on her chest has that damn seal that Emma had hoped she'd never see again.

They tell her that Sarah's real name is Ingrid, that she'd migrated illegally from Norway eighteen years ago, that she never had the right to adopt Emma, that all her belongings are now part of the state...

Emma is taken away by the social worker before she has any chance to talk to Sarah – or Ingrid, whatever her real name is.

Still processing the unbelievable secrets revealed to her, she's in such a shock when she picks up a few essentials from the place she called home that she doesn't even think to call a friend. She doesn't need her phone book to remember Lily's phone number, but for the few days she stays in a foster home on the other side of Boston, she trembles at the thought of calling her after the news of her adoptive mother being a criminal have hit the neighborhood.

And Lily had sounded so excited to hear all about Emma's first crush. She wouldn't be ready to deal with such heavy news. She wouldn't be able to understand.

It's not long before Emma runs away. Sar-Ingrid has been deported, there's no good at searching for her, and no-one will take care of Emma like she did, despite the secrets she'd kept.

Part of Emma wants to believe Ingrid had a good reason. But it still lead to this, to Emma running away, breaking into and stealing a yellow Bug to sleep in and probably escape with to... somewhere. Anywhere.

Only Emma had never imagined she'd get a partner in all of this, sneakily sleeping in the backseats, all courtesy of stealing an already stolen car.

Neal is okay. Only two years older than her, he's quickly interested in her, but when she tells him no he keeps their relationship strictly platonic – and professional. It's always easier to pickpocket and shoplift when one of them plays the role of distraction.

At first, Emma keeps remembering that boy, dressed as a pirate, who looked at her in a way she hadn't been looked at before. But when the way Neal looks at her slowly starts resembling that, she thinks that maybe there was something about the romance novels Ingrid liked so much. Maybe there's no love at first sight, but there may be love at first shoplift, first trespassing, first sharing of stolen goods...

And when he promises her a home in Tallahassee, she realizes that just a look means nothing. When his lips _stay_ on hers, and kiss them again and again. When she pulls him to the backseat of the car and what does she know, that scene in Titanic was actually realistic. When he nuzzles closer to her after he's fallen asleep.

Tallahassee is a bit of a long way, but she dares to have hope. Maybe Ingrid wouldn't be too mad. She'd committed a crime, too, anyway.

Neal convinces her to pick up some watches he'd stolen and stored in a locker. Fencing them would give them big money. Neal wants to make fake IDs for them and run off, but after seeing Ingrid's drama, Emma simply wants to give up stealing and make their life in Tallahassee. He puts one of the watches on her wrist as a promise.

As Emma waits for Neal to come back from meeting the fence, her imagination goes wild. They'll have a home for themselves. They won't have to hide, to run, to fear anything anymore. Not that she gives one damn about the law – she's just tired of running. She spins her wrist, touching the watch and thinking of Neal's promise.

But again, it's not the first promise made to her that's broken. Though admittedly, getting sent to jail for Neal's crime was way worse than any other.

He left her the car. She holds the swan keychain with its keys in her hand, then looks at the bars outside her cell's window and wishes with all her might that she could find Neal and run him over with the car he was oh so generous to give her.

Even though she's just seventeen years old, she's already heard that prison makes one tougher. Maybe Emma's exterior does get that way after eleven months in there, but she knows that inside she's still a mess. It's not just that the Bug is the only place she's got to sleep. It's not just that she sometimes still resorts to shoplifting to eat. It's also that now the pirate boy's look becomes nothing. Ingrid's promises and comforting words become dust.

People look at her and through their harsh looks she sees anger, hate, disapproval.

So be it. It's better that way. It will discourage her from trusting anyone again.

Finding a messy, exhausting job as a janitor is the luckiest she's been since Neal gave her away to the police, putting the blame for his crime on her. It's tough, and she hates it, but it pays just enough to rent an old studio that's at least got a bathroom and a kitchen.

Tallahassee is a lost dream by now. Not that she dares to dream much anymore.

Sometimes, from far away, she spots old friends and acquaintances and she makes sure to avoid them and pretend she doesn't see them. They never call her, and she's glad. What is she going to say anyway? Those people still have their homes, their families, their sparkly clean criminal records. She's not the Emma they knew, and surely not the Emma they're ready to accept.

The years go by and she feels emptier. Her jobs get a little bit better, her studio apartments a little bit warmer, but her heart never feels lighter.

She's satisfying some needs. One-night-stands are as far as she goes, though. Sometimes she allows herself to spend the whole night with her partners, but there are times that she remembers that pirate boy and she nearly feels disgusted by her life. She's stopped wanting more, she's stopped wanting something deeper. She's stopped simply _wanting_.

She hates herself for still thinking about Tallahassee from time to time. Even if she decided to visit, only to prove to herself that there's nothing there for her, she can never spare enough money for a simple trip there. Something always comes up; her apartment flooding, her car breaking down and needing fixing; she gives up when in the span of one year burglars break into her apartment twice and empty it from the few items of value she has.

Even ten years after Neal's fake promise, the damn thought about Tallahassee won't go away.

She wonders if it's because it's the last promise she was given. She spent the first years of her life used to nothing being permanent and secure; then Ingrid pretty much spoiled her, gave her unrealistic expectations about the world. But Emma can't find it in herself to blame her. For all her faults – and crimes – Ingrid had given Emma her love. And it's something she'd go to jail ten times for.

Boston is a big city, but it's choke-full of negative memories for Emma, and just for once she wishes she can spend her birthday somewhere and just do something.

Her boss can only give her two days off the week before her birthday. Just her luck.

Still she's got just enough savings to visit New York City. Truly, she just wants some time away from Boston – she hasn't left since she was released ten years ago. She just wants a place where she doesn't have to avoid old acquaintances, she wants something loud, and drinks, and dance. Lots, lots of dance.

The club in New York isn't half bad. Someone's cigarette burns half a lock of her hair, she spills her drink on her dress, and her shoes are killing her – she learned long ago to not trust heels with her luck, and still her flats are uncomfortable – but she manages to have a decent time.

Or maybe it's the drink that's muddling her thoughts. Maybe she's too drunk to stay on one thought for long, if the realization that her bladder has given her its sixth warning is anything to go by.

Of course there's a queue outside the of course only bathroom. She sits down next to a guy who looks as plastered as her. And she swears it's not the drink that makes all but one person disappear from the queue. And then it will be the guy's turn, and then hers... sweet, finally.

However, when the last person comes out, the guy next to her gestures with his hand.

"Go ahead," he says slowly. His eyes are drooping closed.

"No, it's okay," she says, also slowly. "I can wait."

"Go, please. I'm not one to leave a lady waiting."

"Oh, how a gentleman... what gentleman..." Shit, she's very drunk. Shit? Is that what he... is that why he wants her to go first?

He _is_ a gentleman. And with an accent, to boot.

"Can I kiss you?" she says.

The man just shrugs.

As he sits against the wall, she touches his cheek and kisses him deeply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Total chapter count went up cause I decided to split the last chapter into two parts. From now on updates will come every Tuesday and Friday :)


	6. Killian Jones, October 31st 2000 – October 19th 2011

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of my favourite chapters that I’ve written for this fic. Hence why it’s the longest so far, and the second longest overall.

The girl pulls back when someone whistles at them.

“Nice catch, Captain,” Cruella tells him.

Killian just shakes his head. She's not drunk enough yet. He turns to the girl. “Ignore her. She's just pissed that there's too many adults around.” He throws a glare at Cruella, hoping she'll get the message. Luckily, she does and walks away without any further comments.

Looking back at the zombie princess in his arms, he's only now noticing how detailed her costume is; he was too stuck looking at her eyes before.

The girl opens her mouth to say something, but her gaze suddenly focuses on something behind him and her face falls. She tells him she'll be right back, but she never comes back.

Apparently, she and her mother were renting the villa across the street, and it has caught on fire.

Cruella grabs him and takes him to the car before any fire trucks or police officers arrive and find them and their very stolen car. They leave the car where they first found it and sneak back inside Silver's house without getting detected at all.

However, it's not their sneakiness that Killian considers the first luck he's had in years. It's the sudden visit from a social worker the next morning, the very first he's seen in his whole time in Silver's house – and he would swear that even in the short periods of time he wasn't there, no social worker ever made an unexpected visit. It shows.

They're all taken away, and for the first time Killian truly feels relieved to leave that house. It's only one year until he ages out of the system, and wherever he spends that year will be better than that place.

His next foster home is in Brighton; it's the first time he's moved that far away from London, but he's too disillusioned to hope it will be any different.

Yet it feels so, from the first moment; the guy is outside, waiting for them despite the chilly weather. It's the first time Killian has felt that a foster parent has been waiting for him. There's another teenager with him, and Killian can see a girl peeking at them through a window.

When the social worker takes Killian to them, the man offers his hand.

"Welcome, lad,” he says. “My name is Nemo."

Killian swallows hard, looking at the man's hand. _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea_ was his mama's favourite book. She'd tried reading it to him some times, but all he can remember now is the protagonist's name, Nemo, and his submarine the Nautilus.

"Of all fucking names," he whispers and walks past him into the house. He can hear the social worker blabber some excuse in his favour to Nemo, but he couldn't care less.

He goes upstairs, throws an angry glare at the girl from before who's now peeking from a door, and he gets inside the first open door he finds. Sure enough, it's a bedroom. The blue on the walls, curtains and bed sheets are a nice touch. He throws the plastic bag with his few clothes and possessions on the floor and he flops on the bed.

Oh. It's soft, and the sheets smell nice and fresh. At least his sleep will be a bit easier here.

He feels a knot in his throat when he considers that that guy, Nemo, apparently made sure to provide a warm welcome for him.

He grunts when he hears a knock on the door.

"May I come in?" Nemo says.

"Whatever," Killian says and sits up on the bed, bringing his knees closer. As Nemo comes inside, Killian kicks his shoes off. Maybe he can help keep the sheets smelling nice as long as he can.

"I see you've made yourself at home already."

Killian sighs, ready to mock him for his patronizing words, but Nemo says,

"I hope you like blue. I've got sheets and curtains in a few more colours, if you want to pick something else."

Killian looks up at him. When was the last time that someone cared what colours he liked?

"May I ask what's wrong with my name?" Nemo says, sounding a bit amused.

"Nothing."

After a short pause, Nemo asks, "You've read Jules Verne's book?"

_Damn it._

Killian stays silent, dropping his eyes.

"Okay," Nemo says and takes the chair from the desk, swinging it to face the bed and sitting down. "Killian, right?"

He just scoffs.

"Come on, lad. I saw your papers. It doesn't mean I know a thing about you."

"Really? Didn't you see the time I was taken in for alcohol possession?"

"I saw it. What should that say about you?"

Nemo is talking so casually that Killian can't help looking up again. Nemo's expression is soft.

"What did you want me to figure from that information?" Nemo says.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm getting to know you. I'm trying, at least."

Killian's chest feels heavy. No other foster parent ever tried to do that with him. They just let him in, put out a plate of food for him, and shouted at him whenever he was restless. They never tried to start a conversation with him.

And Nemo's effort is overwhelming him.

"Okay," Nemo says calmly, standing up. "I'll set up the table, but you can eat whenever you feel like it. There's warm water for a shower, and, if you do want to talk at some point, I'll be here." He then leaves, closing the door behind him.

Killian brings his knees closer to his chest and starts sobbing softly. Nemo is... he's nice. And he's trying. And Killian is a fucking mess and he'll ruin it, and Nemo will send him back...

He pulls himself together, wipes his tears and opens the door quietly. He can hear three voices from downstairs; Nemo's, and he guesses, the other two belong to the boy in the porch and the girl who was watching him. He walks down the stairs, careful to not make any noise, and sits on the floor right next to the opening to the kitchen.

He doesn't remember the last time he sat with someone for dinner. At least, sitting down and chat and feeling comfortable. Both children sound very comfortable with Nemo. The girl, in fact, while she seemed shy at first glance, is the most talkative of the three.

Killian's heart drops when he realizes he probably scared her. How would she react if he joined them at the table? _Can_ he join them?

He stands up and goes back to his room. He's gonna ruin it anyway, what's the point of building anything there?

He only comes out the next morning, assuming he'll be told to go to school.

Nemo is in the kitchen, cooking breakfast. "Oh,” he tells Killian as soon as he sees him. “Good morning. Are you hungry?"

He's starving. He just shrugs.

"The eggs will be ready soon. I didn't expect you to wake up that early. You can have anything that's on the table."

There's quite a lot on the table. Jam and bread, honey, cake, tea, a small cheese assortment, even bacon.

Killian just sits down and starts nibbling on some bread, watching Nemo. He's making scrambled eggs, and Killian's mouth waters at how good it smells. He looks down, trying to hide his teary eyes.

It's just food that smells nice. Why is he reacting like this?

"Did you sleep well?" Nemo asks.

"I guess," Killian mutters.

"If you need anything for school, notebooks, pens, let me know and I'll get you some. When you come back you can let me know if you're missing any books."

"Okay."

"Hey." He turns around, facing him. Killian doesn't dare look at his undeniably soft expression. "I mean it."

"I know."

Nemo doesn't say anything else. He finishes the eggs, then the other two kids join them and introduce themselves to him as Will and Tink. Tink seems a bit wary of Killian, but the two kids talk with Nemo as Killian sits with them, even though he's finished eating. He can't find it in him to isolate himself again. He _will_ ruin this, but perhaps he can let himself feel some warmth before he loses all of it.

The first day of school goes surprisingly well. From the first recess even, a boy in his class approaches him.

"Hey, you live with Will, right? Will Scarlet, from eleventh grade? I'm Robin, he told me there would be a new kid at his house."

Killian feels like he's in preschool, as if students will be approaching him and asking him to be friends. But Robin and Will are fun, his professors are nice and he even finds himself paying attention to some of the classes.

He's not used to any of it. When school is over and he follows Will and Tink home, he fears he'll wake up in Silver's house and realize it was all a dream. Just next to the fence gate of Nemo's place, he finds a ten pound note on the ground and he wants to scream.

Someone is clearly toying with him.

He walks in briskly, ignoring Will telling him that there's lunch ready and he locks himself in his room.

He doesn't know what to do, what to feel; it's all too good to be true. Can he really trust it will stay that way? He's lost everyone he loved. If he tries to see Nemo as anything more, if he sees Will as a friend...

It's gone dark by the time Nemo knocks on his door.

"Killian? Will told me that you haven't eaten. Are you feeling alright?"

Good, now he's worried about him.

"You don't have to tell me anything. I just want to know if you're okay."

Killian feels his eyes fill with tears again.

"I may not look like it, but I _can_ break this door. I don't want to invade your space, but if something happened to you-"

Killian runs to the door and opens it wide. Nemo's face falls; there's no doubt he sees Killian's reddened eyes.

"Oh, my boy," he says.

Killian bursts out in sobs and wraps his arms around Nemo. He doesn't care if it's a dream, or if he'll fuck it up eventually. He will take what he can, what he needs, for now.

Nemo is calm, he holds Killian and doesn't ask for an explanation.

"If you ever want to talk to me, I'm here. But I'm not pressuring you. Only if you want," is all he says.

"You can't," Killian says between sobs. "I'm cursed."

"There's no such thing."

"No, I am. My family... they all died. My father- left me. If you care for me you'll- you'll die too."

"I don't believe that. You shouldn't believe that either. You were just unlucky."

It's all too easy, to blame it on bad luck. To think it's just gone away and he can sit back and relax and things will be good for him now.

And he's not used to easy.

"Do you want me to bring you some food? You'll feel better."

He shakes his head, keeping Nemo close. When was the last time he was held like this? He's forgotten how good it feels. And he's not ready to let go, to hope that things will stay like this.

It takes three months. Nemo is patient, and Killian's urge to sneak out fades away. Will and Robin are good company, and he starts focusing on homework again. Tink starts trusting him, and Nemo's place slowly feels like a home. For the first time, there's a wall where he can hang his drawings on, a frame to put his family photo in and a surface to place it on. While he was staying at Silver's place, the only reason he wasn't dropping out of school was his fear of the reaction Silver would certainly have. Now he genuinely believes he can graduate – even if he'll have to repeat his last year.

Nemo believes in him too. Killian is still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but as time passes he starts thinking that maybe the proverbial neighbor is one-legged.

It's what helps Killian agree to Nemo's suggestion that he start talking to a therapist. If he's looking for a bright future, he wants to be emotionally stable enough to really live it.

One month before his finals, Killian feels more stressed than he'd anticipated. Five months ago he wouldn't have cared if he'd failed completely. Now he wants to succeed, if anything, to make Nemo proud. He didn't expect that. But he's known better than to hope that high, and on the first day he tries to study, all he thinks is how he's going to flunk and ruin the second chance he was granted.

That same evening, Nemo knocks on his door, which he's been leaving open more and more often.

“Can I talk to you for a bit?” he says.

Nemo sounds happy. Probably completely oblivious to how all his efforts with Killian were in vain. Not that it will matter much, will it? Killian is just a visitor- no, more like a parasite. At least, in a few months he'll be able to work and have his own income, so he can have a job and rent his own place as he retakes his last year.

But he's constructed an exterior neutral enough to not allow Nemo any inkling of his worries. The man's tried hard enough, there's no reason for him to carry Killian's burden too.

But Nemo also looks a bit nervous. “Look,” he says. “You may say it's a bit too fast; Will and Tink have been living here longer, not that I think of them any higher or lower than I think of you. And, maybe not the best timing, what with your finals coming up and all.”

Killian's heart sinks to his stomach; Nemo has already predicted the outcome and he's sending him away. He feels his exterior start to crumble, so he lowers his eyes. Nemo will give him the ceremonious speech, then Killian will start packing his stuff.

At least, Nemo was kind enough to buy him a decent rucksack to replace the garbage bag Killian had for keeping his stuff in, and a frame for his family photo, and Silver wouldn't be eligible for fostering yet. Few places could be worse than that one, and Killian only has a few months before aging out. He'd have to face-

“Killian, are you alright?”

He realizes tears are running down his cheeks. Oh, no.

“It's nothing.” He quickly wipes the tears away.

“Son, I'm adopting you.”

Killian freezes. He looks up to see Nemo smile.

“I don't know what you thought this would be, but I'm really doing it. I'll be adopting Will and Tink soon, but I don't want to risk it being too late for you. I already see you as family, and I want to make it official. Papers don't mean much to me, but they are a way to provide for you later on.”

Tears are flowing freely now.

“But I have to ask you, do you want me to adopt you? You can say no-”

“Yes,” Killian says in such a low voice he's not sure if Nemo heard it. He doesn't dare say it again, because he feels a shout bubbling up in his throat, and it's very likely that if he shouts that loud, he'll be shaken awake, back in Silver's cursed place.

But how lucky is he, that while still staying with Silver, he's had such a wonderful dream? What happy thoughts that he never had in that place could have created such a grand illusion of happiness?

“It's okay, my boy.” Nemo's voice is steady. He's smiling, but there's a note of sadness on his face. “I've already done most of the procedure; I just wanted to know if you wanted me before I completed it. But it's okay.”

“What is?” Killian manages to keep his voice a whisper.

“I know it's a lot to process. I also know you're happy, but it's okay if you can't show it now.”

Is that what this is? The therapist did mention something about Killian's emotional responses, and how especially his stay with Silver has... blocked them? He can't remember, it's too much right now.

“It's alright. Do you want to be alone?”

Killian's response is just a small nod.

Nemo nods back. “Don't feel pressured. I don't expect you to say anything at all. I just want you to feel at home. For real.”

As if Nemo can predict Killian's exact reaction, he walks out and closes the door just as Killian bursts into sobs. He grabs his pillow and buries his face in it, trying to muffle the sound.

Five months – and a half; that's all he had before aging out. And it's there, just a bit before that grim finishing line, that Nemo came and took him in as a son.

A _son_.

He has a father. He'll probably never call him that, though. Nemo deserves something more than the word Killian used for the man who left him and his brother. Nemo _is_ more than that.

He is everything. And that's exactly what Nemo deserves. More than a... a son who can't express himself properly, even if Nemo is apparently willing to deal with that.

He looks at the book he's been trying to focus on for the past hour. There's no chance he'll manage to focus now, after such a bomb.

But, maybe, the best late reaction he can have is to put his life in order. Not just for Nemo's sake, but for his own most of all.

His finals are extremely easy; he misses a ton of information, but every single test asks the exact things he did manage to learn that past year.

Six months ago he wasn't expecting to graduate; what he expected even less was to have someone be proud of him for that.

And not just Nemo; Will and Tink too are happy for him.

To celebrate, Nemo rents a boat from a friend and they all spend two weeks in the summer sailing across the south coast.

Killian is entranced by captain John Shakespeare, Nemo's friend and the boat's owner. One day, he asks him to teach him how to steer the boat.

"I think I'm in love," he tells Nemo when Shakespeare leaves him on the helm to go adjust a sail. "Can you ask Shakespeare something?"

Nemo seems to freeze, his mouth falling open. "What do you mean?"

"The boat! I want my own boat! Or... work in one! I don't know! Anything!"

He smiles wide at him, and Nemo's confused expression turns into a mirror of Killian's. "Actually..." Nemo says, "he might have mentioned he's looking for some help."

Killian has the best summer in six years – since the summer he went in Boston, that is. Maybe it is, finally, the time to embrace it. He gets a sailing license before even starting to – officially – learn how to drive a car.

He loves his job, and Shakespeare is a great boss; after just one year of Killian working with him, he jokes that he wouldn't mind leaving Killian in his place when he retires.

Killian is happy; he has a family, a job he loves, and finally, hope. For better things to come.

Killian has been thinking of Nemo as a father, even though he never used the word to him. Just two years after being adopted by him, Killian gets a second father; Nemo marries Shakespeare, his boss, of all people. But it doesn't feel weird. They're all as happy as ever.

He takes himself out; Will moves to London to study, but Killian and Robin stay friends and when Will visits, they all go out together.

He has a few flings; they're all short-lived but ending smoothly, and he slowly gets used to attracting people's attention – of the good kind. He had more pressuring issues during his teenage years than worrying about his appearance, so he's now coming to the conclusion that he's grown into a quite handsome look.

It's a rare occasion, but still common enough for him to wonder whether there's a pattern, that his eyes stay stuck to his drink instead of looking around, as he remembers that girl dressed as a zombie princess. God, he was a goner with her. He's too old now for the butterflies and carefree crushes of adolescence, but still, through his dates and flings, he has never felt the same.

Would it have been any different, if he had gotten that girl's name?

He's twenty-four when things start to change. A woman with black curly hair and a presence that makes his knees feel weak comes on a Sunday and rents a boat for a day-long trip along the coast. His knees feel even weaker, but with a different purpose now, when he spots the wedding band on her finger.

He allows himself some fantasies; it's hard for his mind to not wander at the sight of her on the bow of the ship, her hair flowing behind her. She looks like a bird who has finally been let out of a cage, free to roam the world.

The sea has meant freedom to him for a long time now, and he can't help feeling it means the same to her.

Her name is Milah, and that night he dreams of her.

He actually has to restrain himself from looking at the few information she gave to Shakespeare before hiring the boat; he's better than this. She's married, she has her life, and he owes to respect her privacy.

He's successfully accepted that he'll never see her again, when the next Sunday she's renting his boat again. And the next. And the next.

He's now twenty-five and for the first time he decides to push his luck. He's known Milah for nearly a year, and on her part, she always initiated a discussion; the more she talked, the more he got to know about her, the more he fell in love with her. And she didn't miss one single Sunday cruise.

On their last cruise they got tipsy together and she confessed that if it were only for her deadbeat husband and not the son they have together, she'd ask Killian to take her away and never bring her back. With a quick glance, he noticed that she'd taken her wedding band off.

The very next time she buys a cruise, right before they prepare to head for the port, he kisses her. She doesn't even seem surprised; neither is he when she leads him to the cabin below deck, then starts undressing both herself and him.

Three months into their secret relationship, her husband, Gold, finds out. It's a few very difficult trials for their divorce, and Nemo and Shakespeare are disappointed in Killian.

"A married woman," Shakespeare says pointedly.

"I love her." Killian retorts. " _You_ should know that the law means nothing."

"You want to compare?” Nemo says. It's the first time Killian has seen him upset. “Do you realize how much _we_ had to hide? And why? I couldn't be married to the man I loved and keep you. I couldn't even _tell_ you anything! And so we waited. It hurt, but we waited. Because otherwise, lives could be ruined."

"Nothing was ruined. Her husband was an ass to her already."

"But he'll get full custody of the child, _and_ the child will hate you," Shakespeare says. "That's what both of us were thinking. The children. You."

He's too proud to let their words shake him; and what's done is done, anyway. Milah gets only one day a week of seeing her son, and her husband makes it clear that he doesn't want Killian anywhere near the boy.

Before the divorce, it was Sundays he had with her. Now it's Sundays he doesn't, but he's happy she gets some time with her son. And for the kid, too; he knows all too well what it feels like to have one parent leave.

He is happy, but it's costing Milah a lot.

"I wish you two could meet," she says one Sunday night as they hold each other in bed. "You're the two most important people in my life, and it really sucks to only have to be with one of you at a time."

"Maybe it will get better. Maybe Gold will change his mind." He pauses. "Or maybe he can go fuck himself and I'll be with you next Sunday anyway."

Her lips twitch. "It's not just him. Jack, he... he's..."

Killian's heart falls. "He doesn't want to see me."

She looks at him, but before she can say anything to comfort _him_ , he says,

"It's alright. I'm not the best role model anyway."

"Don't say that. He's just too young. I wish I could make him understand that me and his father would have broken up anyway."

"Maybe it's better how it is now."

"What? Why?"

"He's got an outsider to blame. Not his own family." He squeezes her hand. "Few things are worse for the psyche than thinking a monster of a parent."

"You think he doesn't think that of me already? His cheating mother?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I hope he thinks of _me_ as the one who seduced you away."

Milah had a relatively normal childhood, so it's not easy for her to get that sentiment. In truth, Killian wants few things more than getting to know her kid, the most important person in her life. To make the situation clear and rid him of the burden of having to spend his childhood blaming and hating someone. But it's all too complicated, and Jack is still young.

"There's no need to rush into it. There's time," he says. A smile creeps up his lips at the thought that they will stay together at least until Jack is old enough to understand.

The smile spreading on her lips tells him she thinks the same.

Milah never hides how happy she is to be with him, despite what getting with him cost her in the first place.

Nemo does a good job trying not to judge Milah, but Shakespeare isn't as willing.

"What are we comparing here? Being discriminated against for daring to love a person of the same gender with having poor communication skills and not breaking out of a bad marriage you were privileged enough to have without any bumps along the way?"

"John," Nemo says.

"I know, I know, I'm judging without knowing. You're very lucky Milah's ex was kind enough to let her spend Christmas with them. I wouldn't be shutting up if she were here either."

Lucky. Of course he is.

Shakespeare doesn't argue with Nemo suggesting he should spend New Year's Eve with his brother and his family, so Killian has the chance to bring Milah to meet Nemo.

Despite the work Killian has done on himself and his self-image, there are still times he thinks he doesn't deserve Nemo.

When the year changes, Killian feels indebted to him for sacrificing his New Year's kiss with Shakespeare so that Killian and Milah can have their first one together.

But still, lucky overall.

Nearly three years have gone by since Milah's divorce – since they found each other – and still her ex has only changed how often Milah can see her son, not the conditions under which she can.

"You know, I've been thinking," Killian says, "Gold won't like me no matter what, and I don't care. But what do you think Jack will think if I take his mother somewhere _amazing_ , and bring him some really cool gifts back?"

"Buying my son's love? How progressive," she teases him.

"They would be some super amazing gifts if they could buy someone's love," he says in mock deep thinking. "I was only thinking about him seeing that I give a damn."

"What are you planning?"

"I've... set aside some money for a trip. A nice trip. I have some great memories from a trip to the States, but not the best after that. And I was hoping, and, my therapist told me it's not a bad idea, that a second trip there may, you know..."

"The United States?" She smiles. "Where?"

"Wherever you want. Probably not something overly expensive-"

"New York City." Her smile grows wider.

"It does happen to have cheaper plane tickets than, say, the west coast-"

"Yes," she says with a finality as if she's the one leading the trip.

Perhaps she is, Killian thinks with a smile. He would let her lead him anywhere.

Killian convinces Milah to break the rules, just once; it's not that hard when she herself wishes she can have Killian and Jack meet.

Jack is still reserved with Killian, but he's open about wanting an iPhone, a baseball with the New York Yankees logo, and a figurine of the Statue of Liberty. Killian promises him he'll do his best to find them.

"No phone, Killian. He's only eleven," Milah tells him later, when they're alone.

"I 'will' do my best. But customs is a good excuse to not buy it, and it's not like he cannot pester you about buying him one from here," he says, smiling.

The time for their trip comes, and as they settle into their tight seats right in the middle of a four-set seat, Killian recognizes a flight attendant as an old classmate, and as his luck would have it, she recognizes him as well.

After the boarding is completed but before lift-off, the flight attendant comes and carefully lets them know that there are two side-by-side seats on first class whose holders didn't get aboard, and if they get them now they can keep them for the rest of the flight.

"Wow," Milah says as she stares out her window now, holding Killian's hand tight in excitement. "My first trip abroad and immediately getting a free update. Though it's our first together," she smiles at him, "and I wouldn't mind staying cooped up in the other seats with you. But it is fucking awesome."

His idea proves to be excellent. He knows that, no matter what happens, he will never forget how happy she was to explore the city, to see the view from the Top of the Rock, to watch the sun set while sailing over the Hudson River on Clipper City... okay, not that that wasn't big for him too.

They decide to top off their trip by going out clubbing on their last night. It's a bit hectic, but the drinks are great, and the music is good, and the mood brings them into further dancing, and drinking, on Killian's part.

"Don't worry, baby," Milah says, a bit tipsy herself, "I'll take care of you even if I have to carry your sorry ass to the hotel."

He ends up so drunk he can't even stay standing up while waiting for his turn in the single bathroom. The queue disperses soon after a woman comes to sit next to him, apparently as drunk as he is. It's his turn, but he hates to leave her waiting. He gestures with his hand towards the bathroom door.

"Go ahead."

"No, it's okay," she says, her words slurred together. "I can wait."

"Go, please. I'm not one to leave a lady waiting."

"Oh, how a gentleman... what gentleman..."

He shakes his head a little. What has she had? Not much worse than what he's had, he manages to think as his brain seems to slosh inside his skull from just that last movement.

"Can I kiss you?" she says, finally.

What the hell. It's just a kiss, right? He shrugs.

He sees her come forward, then her lips touch his and start pulling them apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Milah's son and the man who betrayed Emma had to be two separate people, I called Milah's son Jack; in the show, the original casting call for Neal's character called him “Jack”, so my choice is an allusion to that.
> 
> Also, I am shamelessly borrowing the idea of pairing Nemo with Captain Shakespeare from the movie Stardust, as inspired by some very creative people on tumblr, though I cannot remember which of those lovely people first created the idea. His first name here is borrowed and anglicized from the character Captain Johannes Alberic, the character from the book Stardust that Shakespeare in the film was recreated from.


	7. Emma Swan, October 19th 2011 – October 24th 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains mentions of character death and descriptions of past child and domestic abuse.

Emma's senses register very slowly. She first realizes the guy is tasting like rum, and then that he's already pushed her, gently, back.

"I thought it would be a quick kiss," he says and looks slowly up at her. "I have a girlfriend."

"Shit. Sorry."

"'Salright. Go pee."

"Yes. That. Thank you again."

Relieving her bladder and splashing cool water on her face bring her a bit back to Earth. Did she just try to make out with a stranger – one who apparently is taken – because he gave her his turn to the bathroom?

She looks at herself in the mirror. Somehow, though she splashed water on her face while completely forgetting she has make-up on, it has stayed intact, not even a single smudge from running mascara.

She may be drunk off her ass, but she's a good-looking drunk. She smiles at her reflection.

She straightens her back and prepares to unlock the bathroom door when a loud, sharp _BANG_ erupts from outside. The music is still loud inside the club, but Emma can hear people screaming.

Her hand freezes over the key. A shooting?

Some long seconds pass by before a second _BANG_ is heard – and with that, a man screaming. She looks at the window. It's too high to see outside, but it still carries the sounds pretty clear. The people inside are screaming in fear. The man outside is screaming in pain.

Finding some composure, Emma takes her hand away. There's a mop in the corner, and she takes it in her hands. It's not much of a weapon in this situation, but it's better than nothing.

Eventually, the screaming calms down and Emma hears ambulance sirens. By now some people have gotten out, so it's too loud to hear if the probably injured man is still there, or even alive.

A loud bang on the bathroom door and it's Emma's time to scream.

"NYPD! Are you alright in there?"

Emma unlocks the door and opens it. An officer with a bulletproof vest on is looking at her, gun at the holster.

Her alibi provided by locking herself in the bathroom – and the two surprisingly sober people who were waiting outside – is solid, so she's the very first to be allowed to leave. She learns that someone shot a woman in the chest, killing her almost instantly, then shot a man in the hand. She's advised to be careful and not stay alone, but it's not as if she has someone to accompany her.

However, she immediately finds a cab, having a smooth ride to her hostel.

She hears about the shooting on the news the next day, when she gets back to Boston. There are no leads about the killer, though they say he didn't act alone. The injured man is in no danger, but he was a couple with the deceased woman.

The guy she kissed... he mentioned having a girlfriend. And she didn't see him anywhere around after the shots – though she doesn't really have a perfectly clear memory of how he looked like.

Tears fill Emma's eyes. She wants to blame them on the thought that the chance of losing people she loves just like that is another reason why she isn't opening up to anyone, but it just doesn't feel a good enough justification for her crying.

She doesn't want to be cooped up in her apartment for her twenty-eighth birthday, but without any company her main choice is clubbing, and the memories of hearing the shots and the man screaming in pain are too raw, so she contents herself with blowing a candle on a single cupcake with the audacious wish to not be alone.

Tired from a busy workday, she lies in bed, checking her phone one last time. She sees Ingrid has contacted her on Facebook, and she stares at her phone for three minutes straight, having a hard time believing it.

Ingrid says she has been trying to get a visa for years now, but her criminal record especially regarding entering the country had been a big hindrance. A few days ago, her application for a 90-days visa was accepted, and she's asking Emma if it's okay to come see her.

Emma all but bursts out in sobs. She only decided to make a Facebook account a week ago, but Ingrid has been trying to get in contact with her for years, even though she knew there was a chance she may never be allowed in the country again.

She realizes she's too emotional to answer her now, and there's still a part of her that may regret the elated "Yes!" she wants to send back. She turns her phone off and sleeps on that thought.

Her emotions are still reeling from the possibility of seeing Ingrid again, finding out why she'd immigrated illegally in the first place, how she's been doing all this time... how much she's been thinking of Emma. But she still tells her yes, providing Ingrid stays in a hotel and not with Emma. At least not yet.

Ingrid arrives only a week later. Half of Emma wants to meet her at their designated rendezvous the next afternoon; the other half wants to greet her at the airport, perhaps even give her a lift to her hotel. It's the same half that feels guilty she didn't offer her to stay at her place.

The second half wins this round. From the distance, Ingrid looks exhausted and much older than Emma had expected her to look, but when she spots Emma her whole face lights up and she nearly drops her bags.

Fuck it. Who cares anymore. Emma runs to her and hugs her tight, and at once she's eleven and has just learned that that wonderful person is adopting her and giving her a forever, loving home.

"I'm so sorry, Emma. I'm so sorry for everything."

Emma is already crying, and so is Ingrid. Even in the arrivals section that's full of people reuniting, they look out of place. Emma feels a surge of cold when Ingrid pulls back a little, but Ingrid just places her hands on the sides of Emma's face and stares at her.

"Emma, Emma." Her voice is shaking. "You're all grown up. And I wasn't there for it."

"Shut up." Emma hugs her again, knowing that people are starting to stare now, but she doesn't care.

"I should have been more careful... you shouldn't have been left alone like that."

"It was because of my lost passport, wasn't it?" Emma pulls back, but she's not angry, and she's careful to not let Ingrid misunderstand. "When we contacted the embassy in England, to get me new papers so that I could travel back, they looked into your case."

Ingrid nods. "It's not your fault, honey. I should have... I..." She sighs. "I've got _so_ much I want to tell you, and I can't get it out!"

"It's okay. It's okay. How long are you staying?"

Ingrid sniffles, wiping away her tears. "I haven't bought return tickets – yet. I can stay eighty more days, though, as long as my ESTA lasts. That's why I contacted you right as I got it, and why I came so soon. I didn't want to miss any day I could have spent here."

Eighty days. But then she'll have to go back. "Then there's enough time. Come. I'll drive you home."

"Home? Emma-"

"Nope. Forget the hotel. You're staying with me."

The next day, after Ingrid has had her rest and Emma has made them hot cocoa – her mug with cinnamon, Ingrid's neat – Ingrid begins her story.

"At first it was five of us. My parents, me, and my two younger sisters, Helga and Gerda. I might have been the oldest, but my love for my father had blinded me. I thought it was normal to get a beating for every little mistake we made. For every time the food wasn't tasty enough, for every time the house wasn't clean enough. He never did any housework himself, but he demanded it was kept pristine. Otherwise, he would hit us.

"My mother was an only child, her parents died before we were born. Our extended family was all on my father's side, and of course, most of them were just like him. It took me years to even consider that what was happening to me wasn't normal, or okay. Both of my father's brothers were policemen. Both their wives were miserable and distant, in every family gathering I can remember them at. Both of them disappeared at some point. I later learned that the one was dead, probably by her husband's hand. The other one had escaped him and fled the country.

"I got that idea myself before I even learned about her. I thought that, when I would turn eighteen, I'd have enough pull to take my mother and my sisters away, and somehow keep us safe."

Her face turns pensive.

"I didn't get the chance. My mother died one month before I turned eighteen. I panicked, I knew for sure that it was my father, making sure we'd never leave, and I was right, and his plan worked. I blacked out, got depressed. And he got worse. With three women to burst out on instead of four, the beatings got more often, and more serious. I ended up in the hospital three times. Helga and Gerda, once each. And every time, the cop who would ask us if our father ever acted on any 'suspicious' behaviour would be a friend of one of our uncles. We couldn't say anything.

"Until I woke up. That time is... hard." She sighs, the memory clearly upsetting her. "I don't remember much of it. I just remember father beating Gerda badly. She was only sixteen." She shakes her head.

Emma wants to tell her that details aren't necessary, but she knows Ingrid needs to let some of that out.

"I grabbed an old radio and hit him in the head. At the time, I thought I'd killed him. Me and Helga picked up Gerda and ran. We managed to hide for a few days, taking care of Gerda's wounds until she could walk and run, and then we tried to cross to Sweden. They found us... we had been wanted for assault and murder attempt. Murder attempt! We were running, and Helga tripped. Gerda wanted to go back for her, but Helga screamed for us to run. And then they shot."

She covers her face with her hand, and Emma's tears fall.

After a long silence, Ingrid continues. "I knew Gerda was running with me, but I barely felt her presence there. We managed to cross the border, but none of us felt any relief. For three months we were in the streets, pick-pocketing, eating off of garbage, shoplifting a few times..."

Emma looks away. Like mother, like daughter?

"Then we found someone who promised us fake passports. He promised us safe passage to the United States. At the time, it was like a gift from God, Emma. But I made Gerda swear not to follow me if they caught me. But I passed over safely. It was Gerda who was caught."

Emma's jaw drops.

Ingrid smiles. "She was okay. She was deported back to Sweden, and I don't know how she made it, but she did. She got married and had two beautiful girls, her Elsa and Anna. But all those years, until I was deported to Norway, I had no idea..."

"Your father?"

"He died four years after we left. I didn't even care to find out how. I've mostly been in Sweden all this time, reconnecting with Gerda."

"I'm so glad you found her."

Ingrid nods. "When I came here, my contact actually managed to find me a job and someone to teach me English, good enough to pass for a local. I worked hard, stayed in horrible apartments... but you know, it was the '80s. The more time passed, the better it got. I supported fundraisers for domestic abuse victims. I let victims stay in my tiny apartments until they found a safe space. And never... I could never share my full story." Her voice breaks. She sniffles, recovers, and continues. "But I wanted more. I wanted to help someone, and see for myself that they did well. Emma... you were not an experiment, I want you to know. I loved you, and I still do. I wanted you to be happy, I wanted you to have what I didn't have." Her voice breaks again. "And I messed that up. I left you alone, you had nothing, no-one... I failed you."

Emma shakes her head, more tears falling. "You tried. And yes, it sucked. But you changed my life. You have no idea how big it was, how better you made my life because you were there for me. I don't know where I would be if it weren't for you."

They're both crying now, and Emma is the first to hug her.

It takes time. Emma isn't ready to share everything that's happened to her, but she's still glad to have Ingrid back and know she had a very good reason for the things that eventually led to Emma being alone. And, after all, she did search for her. That's huge.

"My aunt, the one who had 'disappeared', found me a little after I was brought back and helped me. We didn't even know each other that well, but we knew each other's pain. A little more than a year after that I located Gerda. With my father and most of the side of his family dead, at least the older ones who shared his stance, it was easier to search around. I couldn't leave the country yet, so Gerda took her family and visited me in Norway." Her eyes tear up again. 

What could it have been like, to not have heard from her in nearly twenty years, not knowing if she was dead or alive...

"It was... okay. But I still thought of you. I didn't know what I could do, I was nearly broke for years after I went back. It's only the past four years that I managed to make some money, and all of them were being saved for this exact trip. I will come visit you again, Emma. I don't know how soon I'll be allowed back, but I'll try my hardest. I know you don't need me anymore-"

"I do. I missed you. You have no idea how much."

She smiles sadly. "Perhaps I've got a clue."

She does stay eighty days, which go by way too fast, even with Emma using up her sick and vacation days to spend time with her.

It's the first time since Ingrid was deported that Emma has someone to spend Christmas and New Year's Eve with. It's even bigger for her, considering that Ingrid chose Emma and didn't go back to celebrate with her family.

January goes by too fast, and then Ingrid has to leave.

"I'll visit you in Norway first chance I get. I want to meet your family, too."

"The _rest_ of my family," Ingrid says. "I will wait for you. I'm not perfect with Facebook, but I'll try to keep contact every day."

"Ask Elsa, or maybe even Anna, to teach you next time you meet. They're teenagers, they'll know."

And then she has to say goodbye, and it's too soon, but for the very, very first time, it's a goodbye she _gets_ to say. And it's amazing, how less painful it is, now that it's out there with the promise of a reunion.

The next morning she takes an early walk before work and finds a ten dollar bill on the street.

She looks at it dumbfounded. It's the first time in probably ten years this has happened, and when she walks into her favourite coffee shop, she's still staring at the bill in her hand.

She has a coffee and a big piece of cake, courtesy of the found bill. As she's enjoying her treat, a young woman with bright red streaks in her brown hair sits on the chair across from Emma as if she was just invited to do so.

"Hi," she says all too casually. "Don't freak out, there's just this guy I'm trying to catch and it'll look less suspicious if I pretend to sit with company here." Her tone, facial expressions and hand movements are full in the game.

"What do you mean, 'catch'?"

The woman leans forward. "I'm a bail bond agent. There's a guy I'm trying to catch, and I got word that he comes into this coffee shop quite often. I'm just trying to- speak of the devil." Without changing her expression a bit, she tells Emma, "Don't turn around. He just got in."

"Is he dangerous?" Emma shivers.

"No, no, he was just arrested for some tax fraud." The woman's expression turns serious. "Are you alright?"

Emma's hands are shaking, and the question is out before she can consider it. "Is he gonna be armed?"

"I don't think so. In any case, stay down."

That's it, Emma thinks. The shooting in New York City. Emma lowers her head and leans it a little to the side, managing to get one small glimpse of someone walking towards them.

"Is that him?" Emma says.

"Yes!" the woman says excitedly, exaggerating for cover.

Then the man is right next to her.

"Excuse me," he says, and Emma bites her lip as she looks up at him. "I don't remember seeing you around here. Are you a new customer?"

Emma holds back her surprise. Is he trying to hit on her?

She just shrugs.

The man offers his hand. "My name's Walsh," he says.

"Damn right it is," the other woman says, and with a swift movement of her hand, a handcuff is placed around his wrist.

Walsh looks at them both like an idiot.

"Thanks for making my job so much easier," the woman tells him. "And thank you, too." She winks at Emma, then takes a handcuffed Walsh outside.

Emma sighs, staring at her coffee and half-eaten cake as her heartbeat returns to normal. She knows that this very reaction is different from her panic at first. She turns to see the woman push Walsh into the backseat of a car.

Emma smiles. That was actually exciting.

Her boss is lost in thought all day, so Emma's shift goes pretty smoothly, as boring as retail is. On her way home from work, she walks past a police station and runs into the woman from that morning.

"Oh," the woman says, smiling wide at Emma. "My good luck charm!"

"Your what?"

"You have no idea how long I've been trying to catch that Walsh guy. He may not have any serious felonies under his belt, but he's elusive as hell. And I got a pretty good bonus for him too."

"Oh. Sounds good."

"And it's all thanks to you! Come on, would you like a drink?"

Emma stares at her.

"Oh, no, not in that way," she says and laughs. "Just as a thank you for your help." Her smile is earnest now.

"I didn't do anything."

"You brought me luck. That's worthy enough of at least one beer. And you behaved very bravely at the sight of a potentially dangerous criminal. I think you deserve a relaxing night out."

Normally, Emma can't afford such relaxing nights out. And the woman seems nice. "Okay," she says.

"Great! My name's Ruby, by the way. I know a place around with the _best_ homemade onion rings."

Emma's mouth waters. Ruby has no idea what she just unleashed. She only hopes she can restrain herself in front of her favourite snack.

Ruby is really fun and kind. She doesn't ask any too deep questions that might provoke painful answers, and Emma has one of the best nights out in a while.

She realizes that, not counting her little time with Ingrid the past three months, she hasn't actually had a girls' night out. Not as an adult, at least.

"I'm not kidding, though, when I say you were pretty brave with Walsh. Some people freak out completely. Not that that's bad, but..." she says and looks at Emma, raising her eyebrows.

"But?"

"You know, there are never enough bail bond agents out there. Especially in a city as big as this."

Emma lies in bed that night, mind too full of thoughts to sleep. Ruby went through all the details of her work, and Emma absorbed it all. But, she has done time – not that she felt ready to confess this to Ruby.

She may have the guts to do that job, but probably not the ideal past for it.

Two weeks later, she's outside that same police station waiting to go with Ruby for drinks. Perhaps it's time to talk to her about whether her past would pose a problem to her becoming a bail bond agent.

She thinks she sees it too late; a car, losing control and going straight for the pregnant woman a few steps away from her.

Emma doesn't think; she runs forward, somehow manages to gently push the pregnant woman aside and then jump onto the running car's hood, rolling over the roof and down onto the street.

People are running to them. A man is shouting someone's name, worried. Then Ruby kneels down next to Emma.

"Emma! Are you alright?"

She is. She didn't even scrape her palms while falling down. She stands up, moving every limb and checking for any pains.

"Is it the adrenaline?" Emma says. "I feel fine!"

"You must be the luckiest chick on Earth," the car's driver says, also checking her for any injuries.

"You... you pushed my wife aside," a man says, coming closer to her, side-hugging the apparently unharmed pregnant woman.

"I- I did that."

The woman steps forward and hugs Emma tight. Then suddenly, people around them are clapping. Clapping at _her_.

She does go into a bit of a shock; David Nolan, the expectant father, takes her to the hospital to check her out for any internal injuries. Mary Margaret Nolan, the expectant mother, sits next to her on the back seat, holds her hand, and can't stop thanking Emma again and again.

Ruby is in the passenger's seat, talking to David, and it's only then that Emma realizes they're in a police cruiser, siren on and all.

After a full examination Emma turns out to be fine – not a single bruise. Once again, hearing the good news, Mary Margaret pulls her into a squeezing hug.

Encouraged by her unusually good luck, Emma tells Ruby about having done time. Ruby just tells her that David owes her big.

And by a week later, she's a bail bond agent.

Next month, she's staring at her bank balance, unable to comprehend having so much money available to spend however she likes.

At this rate, she'll be able to afford a trip to Norway in less than three months. And she does. She sees Ingrid, meets her sister and nieces, and for the first time since Neal left her she allows herself to just relax and enjoy the moment.

It's still not easy. Gerda's English isn't the best, and more than a few times Emma assumes Gerda doesn't like her, and her heart nearly breaks. It takes a lot of reassurance from Ingrid, but by the time Emma has to get back, she's already friends on Facebook with Elsa – Gerda says that Anna will get an account after turning eighteen as well – and they all promise each other that they will meet like that again.

On her flight back Emma gets a window seat facing north and gets a stunning view of the aurora. She hears the flight attendants say how they've never had sighting of it in the very few hours of dark the north gets in the middle of summer.

Emma can hardly believe it. How did luck decide to be so nice to her?

She can't even imagine something sullying her trip, but as she thinks that, she starts worrying that her bad luck will strike again.

It doesn't. Her job goes well, she gets a better apartment with a much kinder landlady, Ruby becomes her first friend in years and David and Mary Margaret invite her for dinner every Sunday, despite having a very loud and time-consuming infant.

The baby is always sleeping soundly every time Emma visits, and when he does wake up he's calm, surprisingly so according to his parents.

Emma lies in her new bed, on her brand new anatomical mattress, and thinks how it all started because she found that ten dollar bill on the street – the first of many that came later, if she's honest – and decided to treat herself that morning.

As luck would have it. Perhaps it was all a matter of positive thinking.

She grows closer to Ruby and the Nolans and, combined with Ingrid's surprise visit, her twenty-ninth birthday is the first in twelve years that she doesn't celebrate alone.

She starts crying when they sing her the Happy Birthday song. Against all odds, her wish from last year actually came true, in the most unexpectedly heart-warming way.

From that point on, it's only better and better apartments and all holidays spent with either friends in the States or family in Norway.

During one more return trip, she realizes how she can actually afford all these trips now; a dream she couldn't even imagine before.

Her thirtieth birthday is celebrated in Norway; her thirty-first, back in the States, and for her thirty-second, she decides to gift herself and Ingrid something they'll both love; tickets to the Scorpions' 50th Anniversary Tour in Maidstone, England.

Ingrid tries to stop Emma from paying both their plane tickets, but Emma is not having it.

A small part of her remembers what happened after their first and last trip to England, but it's too small a part to stop her from organizing the whole trip.

If Emma is honest, it's one hundred percent Ingrid's fault that Emma loves the band so much. It's one of the things she passed on to her without even trying.

The concert is amazing; even though they have first row tickets, they have lots of space to dance and jump and enjoy the whole concert.

After the concert is over, Emma is waiting for Ingrid a bit _farther_ away from the portable toilets, when she hears someone humming the melody of _No One Like You_ next to her.

"Catchy tune, huh?" she tells him.

"Oh, which one isn't?" he answers. "What a night."

Emma nods. He's definitely a local. "Did you have fun?"

He makes a grimace. "A lot of people stepped on me, I got groped, pick-pocketed, and I got in a fight with my... friend, but you know what?" He shrugs. "Bloody worth it."

"Oh, sorry that you were mugged."

"Ah, it was like, twenty quid. I've known better than to carry credit cards where hands can easily reach."

Emma realizes she had almost everything _on_ her, including her passport. But everything in her belt bag is intact.

"Do you have a ride back home?"

He looks at her, and his expression turns shocked for a moment. "Bollocks. I overshared, didn't I?"

"I mean, I have a car, and space for two... how many of you are there?"

He seems to recoil a bit, raising his hand to scratch behind his ear before putting it back inside his jacket pocket. "Don't worry. We've got a car. And we going right back to Brighton, anyway."

"Oh." Emma pauses. "I don't even know where that is."

The man smiles. "Figured so. From your accent."

Emma smiles back. "I'm Emma," she says, extending her hand.

"Killian," he says, getting his hand out of the pocket and shaking hers. She barely notices that his other hand stays in the other pocket even after his right hand drops to his side. "So... you know that they're actually having a few concerts in the States for this tour, right? How come you decided to fly all over to here?"

"Well, today... or more like, yesterday," she says, checking her watch, "was my birthday. This was more like a birthday gift to me, and of course I'm going to see them in- What?"

He is staring at her with his jaw dropped. "You're not kidding? Tomorrow- or, today, is _my_ birthday."

"Wow. Happy birthday, then."

"Happy birthday to you too. Seems it was a great one."

Emma sighs happily, looking back at the now empty stage. "I'd say one of the best ones." She then turns to him. "Does your birthday seem promising?"

He looks at her; his eyes and his smile soften. And she _actually_ feels butterflies in her stomach.

Wow. It's not like she's been denying herself much, but this _look_... she takes a step forward before she realizes it.

And he leans towards her.

"It seems that way, aye," he says, still smiling.

Oh, damn him. They both close the distance between them, and his lips are on hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has happened! They have officially met! Rejoice! But prepare for the next chapter; you know what's coming. Emma spent those four years being lucky, so Killian... >:)
> 
> Also, Scorpions did have a concert in Maidstone in 2015 as part of their 50th Anniversary Tour. It took place in July, but I took some creative liberties with the date for this story ;)


	8. Killian Jones, October 19th 2011 – October 24th 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will hurt. I am sorry.
> 
> This chapter contains character death, some depictions of violence, depictions of poor and unhealthy coping mechanisms, as well as a toxic relationship. Any intercourse and physical touch in general is fully consensual, but emotionally the relationship may appear upsetting to some. Also there are some elements that may resemble emotional self-harm.

The kiss is deeper than he expected. Killian pushes the woman back, but gently. He was the one who gave her permission to kiss him, after all.

"I thought it would be a quick kiss. I have a girlfriend."

Her brows are going wild. "Shit. Sorry."

He's so stupid. What would Milah think? "'Salright. Go pee."

"Yes. That,” she slurs. “Thank you again."

Just as the woman closes the bathroom door behind her, Milah appears above him.

“You okay?” she says.

He looks at her confused, before he realizes it's not that normal to sit on the floor while at a club. “Yeah,” he says. “Just very, very drunk.”

She gives him her hand, he takes it, then she starts pulling at him. “Let's go outside for some air. There's too much smoke in here.”

“I wanna pee!”

She drags him up. “You can pee outside! Let's go!”

It feels better outside. The cool, clean air wakes him up a bit.

Milah throws her arms around Killian's neck and pulls him to lean his forehead on hers. He smells the martini in her breath, landing hot against his lips.

He closes his eyes. He could stay like this forever, and how he wishes this moment lasted that long...

“How sweet,” a sharp voice says from the side.

They turn together to see Gold staring at them, his hands crossed on the handle of his cane. There's two big guys flanking him, and Killian pulls Milah aside, stepping in front of her.

“What do you want?” Killian says.

“I did wait,” Gold says. “I held back, let you take my wife away from me.”

“Shut up,” Milah says, moving to Killian's side. “Our marriage was over long before I met Killian.”

Gold looks at her, hand grabbing the cane hard.

“You... you followed us here?” Milah says, suddenly realizing. “What the hell? Where's Jack?”

“You have no right to ask about him,” Gold says and takes a brisk step forward. “You went against my conditions for meeting him. You brought that _bastard_ with you!”

Milah flinches, and Killian's left hand grabs onto hers.

“And you?” Gold looks at him. “Going behind my back to take my son on your side? Trying to buy his love?” His face seems to barely contain his rage as he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a handgun.

Killian's hand squeezes Milah's as his other one raises up in defense. “Whoa, Gold, wait-”

Gold shoots.

Though Killian’s ears are ringing from the exploding sound, he hears Milah's trembling sigh. It feels like it's hours later that he turns to look at her, eyes going straight for the growing red spot on her chest.

And then she's falling.

“No,” he whispers and holds her, gently breaking her fall.

Her eyes are moving wildly, then she coughs and a thin trail of blood runs from the corner of her lips.

“No, no. Milah...”

She focuses on him. “I love you,” she whispers. She gasps one last time, then she's limp in his arms.

It's like even more hours pass. He feels her hot blood staining his hands.

Her eyes are closed. She's not breathing. Only her blood moves, dripping out of her body even though her heart has stopped beating.

“No,” he says.

He hears the tapping sound of a cane, and he looks up to see Gold standing above him, gun aimed at him. His henchmen also aim their handguns at him.

“What are you waiting for?” Killian says. “Finish it.”

What else can he say? It's not as if he'd leave him to tell the tale.

“Oh, no. You won't be so lucky,” Gold says, but he doesn't move.

Killian manages to hold himself back only long enough to set Milah down gently, then he lunges at Gold, grabbing the gun.

It all happens in half a second.

Gold shoots, Killian's ears are ringing again, and he sees two fingers fly off in a sudden fountain of blood.

He drops down to his knees. His left hand hangs limp in a way no hand should. The thumb and index finger are missing, and there's a gaping crescent hole, starting under his middle finger and reaching to the middle of his wrist.

The pain hits him suddenly and a scream erupts from his throat.

His vision comes and goes; one moment Gold is standing above him, the next Killian is leaning over Milah, the blood spilling from his hand onto her unmoving body.

There's more people screaming; people shouting; sirens, blue and red lights...

Then white. So much white.

Killian is just three days younger of twenty-eight when he once again thinks how he's cursed.

Milah is dead, there is no doubt about that. His hand was amputated, and he has to spend a whole week in the hospital before the doctors clear him for a transatlantic flight.

In the meantime he learns that Milah's body was sent back to England, per Gold's request.

At first, he finds it impossible; but the cops who'd questioned him about the assault soon inform him that Gold has solid alibi in _London_ at the time of the murder.

Killian almost shuts down in the week he has to spend in there; Gold must have stolen Killian's phone before fleeing the scene of the crime, and Killian has no way of contacting Nemo, and he didn't let him know the specifics of his trip in the first place, like when exactly his return trip would’ve been.

If Nemo had known, he would have worried after not getting any news from Killian the day he was supposed to return. He would have contacted hospitals, would have found out about the assault. Probably would even honor Killian's request to attend Milah's funeral in his place, if Killian had the guts to actually ask him for that.

And to top it all, Nemo's phone at home is out of order. Why didn't he ever bother memorizing his cell phone? Now all Killian can do is lie in his hospital bed and do his damnedest to avoid looking at where his left hand is no more.

The blasted week goes by; Killian spends the rest of his savings into a new return trip, the only one he can afford has two stops in between.

He's dead tired, hungry, with fresh dog crap under his sole, and somehow he's not surprised to see his apartment has flooded.

It's three in the morning and he contemplates walking through the ankle-deep water anyway and collapsing in his bed.

He stands so long in front of the open door of his apartment that eventually the downstairs neighbor comes to complain about water dripping into his place.

One call to the fire department later, Killian picks up his two bags – he didn't have the heart to throw Milah's stuff away – and takes a taxi to Nemo's place.

Nemo obviously got out of bed to let Killian in, and of course, he asks Killian what happened.

It's like he's seventeen again, unable to react to one of the most life-changing news he ever received, only the opposite, in the most grim way that he never dared imagine.

He's hiding his handless arm inside his jacket pocket and silently walks the stairs up to his old bedroom. He doesn't answer Nemo's questions next morning, he doesn't even sit down to get breakfast. He goes straight to the lawyer Milah had during her divorce.

Gold is paying people to give false testimony, and Killian is gonna take him down.

Too consumed in his own hatred for the man, the whole week he spent planning his comeback he didn't think of the problems the lawyer is listing now; Killian was drunk – as evidenced by hospital records – enough for his testimony to be considered debatable; he also has motive to want to get back at Gold, stronger than Gold's motive to kill his unfaithful wife three whole years post their divorce which concluded in his favour; and of course, one has to prove first that Gold's witnesses are lying before questioning Gold's alibi of more than five thousand kilometers away from the scene of the crime.

Killian doesn't return to Nemo's place. His own apartment stinks, damp and moldy, half of his furniture and appliances were ruined, but at least his bed is functioning, and he can't deal with Nemo's sympathy right now.

He needs to take Gold down. He can't have any more distractions.

It takes him a month to remember his therapist. He checks his emails for the first time since the assault, and he feels he loses another part of him at the news of his therapist moving towns to study for a doctorate; she's suggested other therapists at him, followed by two more emails of asking if everything is okay, then nothing.

Killian looks at the names and phones of the suggested therapists as if they're threats to his consciousness. He actually laughs. Dr. Eriksen had him since before he was even an adult and she knew everything about his fucked-up adolescence. Where would he even begin with someone new?

He deletes the email.

For two years, his whole life centers around finding weak spots in Gold's armour. He quits from Shakespeare's boat rental and works at stock in the harbor. It's a tough, time-consuming job, but it keeps him in view of the sea and gets his mind off his pain. Alcohol takes over that job in his time off.

He stops drawing; Milah used to draw with him and it nearly breaks him to pick up a pencil to sketch. The last thing he sketches is the design for the tattoo with her name on it that is soon permanently inked on his arm.

Two years of trying, as much as his exhausted psyche and a mind always leaning towards booze can handle, and the best he manages is to break into Gold's house, hack through his computer and locate some suspicious activity between Gold's bank account and the one of one of his witnesses.

Thirteen years of no spots in his criminal record mean nothing to the law when there are spots in it in the first place, and he's arrested for breaking and entering.

Nemo responds to Killian's call to bail him out, even though Killian has barely spoken to him in two years. However, the disappointment is, for the first time since Killian met him, visible on his face.

“It's your decision,” Nemo tells him after Killian is out. “Your path to choose, and your life to ruin.”

If it were anyone else, Killian would be flipping him off. But Nemo is the one who took Killian in as an assortment of broken pieces and put him back together, loving and patient all throughout. The one who has always been too good to be called a mere father.

“It's not just wanting to get back at that bastard,” Killian says, nearly shouting. At Nemo's small flinch, Killian breathes in and out. Among all his losses, it's the first one that has filled him with such rage. “That monster killed her in cold blood. And he's out there now, not paying for his crime-”

His voice is too unsteady now to accommodate shouting.

“It's not just personal. He killed her-” A soft sob breaks his sentence in half. “-and he's walking free.”

“The world is not fair,” Nemo says in a very soft voice, hand resting on Killian's shoulder. “Come home, son. This isn't what you need right now.”

“No. I need to see him behind bars.”

“You need to grieve.”

Killian scoffs, laughing mirthlessly. “It's been two years.”

“Exactly.”

He drops his gaze. If he looks at Nemo's face right now, he may crumble, and his efforts of two years – albeit not very successful – will be rendered pointless. The time he lost, the damage he's done to himself, to his relationships with everyone, Nemo, Shakespeare, Will and Tink, it will all be for nothing.

And worst of all, he'll be yet another one who will do Milah wrong. If he gives up, he'll be doing to her nothing better than what Gold did, and the very thought sickens him.

There's only one thing he changes. His drinking has reached new levels, and he needs, if nothing else, to survive in order to bring Gold down. So for now, AA meetings are something.

At first, he only talks about how he manages to stay clean, how he slips and how he tries to not beat himself up over it. His fifth meeting is on a particularly bad day; the story of watching the love of his life die slips from him, and across the circle he gets looks of pity that he hates.

If only he told everyone about the furious thoughts for revenge on Milah's murderer that have been plaguing his every waking thought for the past two years.

He slumps in his seat and stays silent for the rest of the meeting. He shouldn't have come today, he should have known he would be too emotional to think rationally before speaking.

The meeting ends and he's already made up his mind to look into other AA groups before he even exits the building.

“Excuse me,” a voice calls at him.

He turns. It's Eloise Gardener, one of the attendees.

“On the last meeting you mentioned that mental activities keep your thoughts away,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“I'm hosting gardening classes, two evenings a week at the Bare Feet Greenhouse. I thought I could invite you to join, they're already quite cheap and I'll give you a discount.”

“Your name is Gardener, innit?”

She smiles. “And I am a gardener. Shocking, I know. But I've found it's a good distraction, especially knowing you're taking care of a life. You get the satisfaction without committing to... raising a child, let's say.”

Killian decides it's worth a try; unlike the AA meetings, raising a plant actually has visible proof of progress.

He stops coming to the meetings, but Eloise doesn't ask him why. She teaches him and guides him through providing a good environment for his plants.

One night after class, she helps him move the pots with his grown plants to his apartment. He doesn't truly invite her in, and when she initiates a kiss with him, he takes a few seconds of thinking before he realizes he doesn't mind that much.

It's just fuck, and Eloise doesn't seem to be thinking it's anything deeper than he does.

If he thinks it's any deeper, he'll just be haunted again by that miserable thought, that the last person he kissed before Milah died was not Milah herself, but a random stranger whose face he wasn't even sober enough to remember.

Eloise leaves and within minutes, he's left as well to search for any open store that sells booze. Rain is pouring down, cars splash him until he's soaking wet, but he finally gives up when he trips and falls, his leg hurting too much to take him too much further.

Even the couple of hours he stays in the hospital while they put a walking cast on him feel unbearable. Two years have gone by and the memories of hospital misery are still too raw.

Eloise doesn't comment on the cast nor his continued absence from the AA meetings. She invites him to her place and after they have sex he asks if he can stay the night. That way it's much easier to avoid looking for a drink to deal with how disgusted he feels.

Even the other people attending the gardening lessons wouldn't imagine Eloise and Killian are sleeping together – and Killian is attending two different classes side by side. Not that there's anything to show for it. They just fuck, sleep in the same bed, and that's all. She keeps him from running out for a drink in the middle of the night, better than any AA meeting managed, he gives her a person to have control over the way she wants, and they scratch each other's itches.

Nemo keeps trying to stay in touch with him, and Killian nearly blocks his number out of pure shame. Perhaps if Nemo realizes he's been blocked he'll stop bothering.

Killian has practically moved in with Eloise now, or she with him; in any case, they'll sleep in the same bed every night, whether it's the one in Killian's apartment or the one in Eloise's house.

He cannot connect who he was before with who he is with Eloise now. Before Nemo even adopted him officially, Killian had allowed him to pick up his pieces and make him a functional human. With Milah, it was Killian who was the whole, the rock she could lean on.

With Eloise, he can once again be broken, but without any expectation to get fixed back up – and he's too tired for unrealistic expectations. He can stay the mess that he is, sharing his body and his space with her so that he can feel something, even when the feeling isn't the best. Eloise is controlling and demanding, and Killian's feelings for her range from fear to disgust, but he prefers those over pain, grief, rage, and a continuously burning thirst.

It's easier to hate his... “partner” than to hate everything else in his life, including himself.

He's actually shocked to realize two years have passed since his first time with Eloise, and nothing at all has changed. Their feelings didn't change towards one way or another; they just kept fucking, sleeping next to each other, and going by their day without thinking about each other.

He almost hates it when she asks him to ride with her to a concert in Maidstone. Not only because she's making ensuring no-one assaults her sound like a chore, but also because he's still not ready to enjoy music he used to love. Especially not in her presence. Being in her company is not a circumstance that fits happy thoughts.

There's a lot of things he's been denying himself since Milah died. Everything that used to make him happy, even the company of his family, feels sullied now.

He doesn't expect to enjoy the concert. But Eloise buys his ticket and drives the car, so he decides that he can tolerate one night of being a boy toy to discourage sleazebags.

It doesn't even feel that special that his birthday is tomorrow; he lost Liam a few days after his fifteenth birthday, and Milah a few days before his twenty-eighth. Maybe it's just not in the cards for him to celebrate it again.

For three whole hours, he forgets everything. There's just the music, and the lights, and his throat getting sore from singing without a care.

There is, of course, the occasional groping, people stepping on his feet, even getting an elbow to the ribs, but for him it's all par of the course now. Including checking his pockets afterwards and realizing that twenty pounds are missing. And Eloise being... well, Eloise.

“You were supposed to stand by my side,” she starts complaining after the concert is over and people start dispersing.

“I can assure you I was touched against my consent far more than you were.”

“Is that supposed to be an excuse?”

Ugh, her arrogant, calm face she makes when she tells him off. He hates it.

“If you wanted an actual bodyguard, you should have hired one. I only have one hand,” he bites back at her.

“Really? I get you a birthday gift and you consider this an appropriate response.” There’s no question mark in her tone.

“Oh, piss off. As if you've given a fuck about my birthday all these years.”

Her lips purse together, but her voice keeps that cool tenor that irritates him to no end. “I wanted to make it a good one for you. Just because you don't care about it doesn't mean no-one else does.”

He sighs. He actually had a good time and he doesn't want it ruined by her gaslighting. He's experienced people actually caring for his birthday, and he knows Eloise's words are just words. Next, she'll say that she contacted Scorpions themselves and asked them to have a concert the day before his birthday.

She shakes her head and goes for the portable toilets. At last, he can have some time on his own. He turns his head away and back to the scene, now completely empty.

_No One Like You_ wasn't exactly the song he liked the most tonight, but it's the one he can't stop humming. He's _humming_!

Maybe he does owe Eloise a bit. Just a bit.

"Catchy tune, huh?" he hears from the side.

He turns, seeing a woman with a wide smile on her face.

"Oh, which one isn't?" he says, smiling back. "What a night."

The woman nods. "Did you have fun?"

The words pour out of him like vomit. "A lot of people stepped on me, I got groped, pick-pocketed, and I got in a fight with my...” – How should he call her? – “friend, but you know what?" He shrugs. "Bloody worth it."

"Oh.” Her face softens. “Sorry that you were mugged."

"Ah, it was like, twenty quid. I've known better than to carry credit cards where hands can easily reach." A very dedicated hand, maybe. There's only so many hiding spots he has.

"Do you have a ride back home?" the woman says.

He stares at her, and he feels his jaw drop when he realizes. "Bollocks. I overshared, didn't I?"

She just smiles. "I mean, I have a car, and space for two... how many of you are there?"

He scratches behind his ear. "Don't worry. We've got a car. And we going right back to Brighton, anyway."

"Oh.” She seems to think for a moment. “I don't even know where that is."

He holds back a laugh. "Figured so. From your accent."

Her smile widens. "I'm Emma," she says, extending her hand.

"Killian," he gives his hand back, careful to keep his left arm inside his jacket pocket. She's still looking at his face when he drops his hand to his side. "So... you know that they're actually having a few concerts in the States for this tour, right? How come you decided to fly all over to here?"

"Well, today... or more like, yesterday," she pauses as she checks her watch, "was my birthday. This was more like a birthday gift to me, and of course I'm going to see them in-” She pauses suddenly. “What?"

She's obviously cut off by the expression on his face. "You're not kidding? Tomorrow- or, today, is _my_ birthday."

"Wow. Happy birthday, then."

"Happy birthday to you too. Seems it was a great one."

Emma seems happy as she looks back at the now empty stage. "I'd say one of the best ones. Does your birthday seem promising?"

His chest feels twice its normal size when she turns to look at him. Somehow, with their birthdays being so close, it feels as if her having had a great birthday is feeding his own satisfaction for that day, for the first time in four- no, five years.

Some of her slightly messy hair is sticking to her face – she probably went all out dancing tonight – and her eyes seem to droop in drowsiness, but she's absolutely glowing.

Glowing and looking at him.

When she takes a step towards him, it feels like it's gravity that's pulling his own body to her.

"It seems that way, aye," he replies.

Her eyes close when she's a few inches away from him, but he waits for the moment his lips touch hers to close his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to remind the readers that this chapter is told from Killian's point of view, distorted as it is from grief, rage and isolation from the people he loves. Emotional progress is almost never visible in the short term, especially regarding addictions. Killian might have thought the AA meetings didn't help him, but it doesn't mean that giving up and depending on a controlling person to keep him clean was the healthy thing to do.
> 
> I know it's a work of fiction but some lines are easily confused, so the message I want to pass is that if you or a loved one is trying to let go of an addiction, keeping up the effort when progress isn't directly visible may be hard, but it's worth it and will eventually help.


	9. Emma Swan, October 19th 2015 – May 19th 2016

The kiss doesn't get deep, but Emma's insides are melting; damn it, it feels so good and he feels so sweet. She breaks the kiss, fearing she's already gone too red and hoping the cold lights around them won't show it.

He's looking at her, and she feels she'll have to run or she'll turn into a pool of goo right at his feet.

Thankfully, his eye catches something and he turns his head to the side. Emma turns as well, only to see a woman a few yards away, about their age, looking at him with a scorned expression.

Killian just shrugs at her, and the woman seems to scoff and turn her back at them.

He turns back to Emma. “Don't worry,” he says. "Wanna add me on Facebook? It's Killian Jones, if, _if_ you're interested... we can share favourite songs."

Emma snorts. "Like we're in high school?"

He laughs, a bit awkwardly so. "I won't stalk you if you don't add me, just saying."

Emma smirks at him, then reaches into her belt bag and takes out her phone, which immediately slips from her fingers.

"Shit," she says, picking it up and gasping when she sees that the screen cracked a little. "Shit!"

"Oh." Killian bites his lip. "I feel as if I've caused that."

Emma shakes her head. "It's replaceable. Don't worry. Killian Jones, you said?"

He looks to be debating himself. But Emma quickly opens the app, finds him and adds him. "Friend request sent," she says. "So we can chat about hot, new releases," she says, only half joking.

"Hey," Ingrid calls at her. Emma turns to see Ingrid's eyes go from her to Killian.

"Coming," Emma says. "So, we'll keep in touch," she tells him, pointing at him with her phone.

For the first time in so long she finds herself hoping that this near stranger will actually respond.

“Who was that?” Ingrid says as they start walking to their rented car.

“He's Killian,” Emma says with an innocent smile.

“You know him?”

“No, actually. We just met.”

Ingrid's brows shoot up. “You were just kissing a guy you just met?”

Her tone isn't accusative, just curious. So Emma's smile widens and she says, “Yeah. Yeah, I-”

She's cut off by her own gasp when her ankle bends unexpectedly and she falls down. For one long second she feels cold sweat at the back of her neck; first her broken phone screen, now tripping on flat ground?

“Emma?” Ingrid is kneeling next to her, face full of worry.

“I'm okay,” Emma says, collecting herself.

“Sweetheart, did he give you something?”

Emma laughs, trying to break the tension despite that small but insistent piece of her mind that's still worried. “If you're referring to butterflies in my stomach, yes.”

“I'm serious.”

“I'm alright. I just... didn't step right. And I'm a bit tired, to be honest.”

Ingrid's face relaxes a bit. “You did dance a lot tonight. Are you sure you're okay?”

“Yes, Ingrid. We were just talking and then... kissing felt right.”

“In any case, perhaps you should let me drive.”

Emma's jeans got a bit dirty and she scraped her palm after falling, but they're too small to rival the amazing birthday night she just had.

She wakes up with a bit of a headache, ringing ears, and a sore throat. But that day it's the goodbye to Ingrid that takes priority.

Ingrid promises to do her best to come to Boston for Christmas. Emma holds back her tears, hugs Ingrid, then waves her goodbye as Ingrid boards her plane.

Emma sits back. And waits. And waits.

Her flight was supposed to have left only twenty minutes after Ingrid's – she had considered herself very lucky to have found two cheap flights so close to each other – but now it's been delayed for more than two hours, the waiting chairs full of exasperated passengers and too many tired toddlers.

The food isn't great, the air conditioning hits her a bit too much and she doesn't get much rest. The lines at passport control are long, and she's happy she decided to take just a cabin trolley and not have to wait at the baggage carousel. She's already too tired, her body stiff, and she regrets not asking Ruby to come pick her up as she waits for a taxi while it's raining and a little too cold outside.

The next morning she scrolls through the line of notifications from Ruby asking her again and again to wake up and tell her _everything_ , and it's only then she sees that Killian has accepted her friend request.

And he's active now. She checks the time – it's afternoon there and a Sunday.

She gives herself ten minutes. Her hair is not cooperating and she smudges the eye pencil on her lower eyelid.

She just shakes her head. Maybe the connection will be bad enough that he won't be able to see that much detail.

She settles herself on her bed and takes five deep breaths before calling Killian on video.

It takes a bit too long for him to answer. Maybe she should have asked first?

Eventually, his face fills her screen, and her stomach is all in happy knots again.

“Good morning,” he says. “Or afternoon? Have you gone back yet?”

“Yeah,” Emma says, noticing her wide grin on her preview, “I arrived last night.”

“How was your trip?”

“A bit more tiring than I'm used to. But safe.”

“Than you're used to? You do it often?”

Maybe she's not ready to go fully into her history with Ingrid, but he seems to catch up with what little she shares. They talk more than just their favourite music. For now, it's food, and how they'll spend their Sunday, then Halloween and Christmas...

She doesn't realize a whole hour went by until Killian, seeming a bit conflicted, says he has to go eat. He's staying with his family, and his parents are 'already experiencing retirement by eating early'.

Emma laughs, swallowing her own bitterness. She keeps it at bay until the call ends, then she sighs, looking at her cracked, black phone screen.

He's with family. He doesn't have to move countries and choose whether to celebrate holidays with them or with friends.

“Ugh,” she tells herself. She doesn't actually know much. For all she knows, he's had it as bad as her.

Work isn't going well. There are enough cases to go by, but they wear her out every day. Ruby is busy with work and her new girlfriend, and David's mother has gotten sick and the Nolans don't have the time to invite Emma every Sunday anymore.

At least, she manages to talk to Killian twice a week. She knows she'd like to talk more often to him, but she's still a bit insecure. Not just about whether she's annoying him, but because she feels like an old pessimist again, and caring for this will only end up breaking her heart.

She can't help it, however, especially when half the time it's him calling her, staying up late because it's already evening when she finishes work, then they spend the next at least two hours equally listening and talking.

She still gets to see Ruby and the Nolans occasionally, and she still gets enough to go by. But her one constant these days is Killian.

Ingrid tells Emma that she can't issue a visa in time and she won't be there for Christmas. Emma knows her bank balance isn't enough to afford a last-time trip to Norway; the Nolans will spend the holiday with David's mother in a small town in Maine, and Ruby is taking Mulan to New York City. Bless their hearts, though, they offered. It was only the white lie that she found super cheap tickets to Norway that convince both Ruby and the Nolans to not cancel their plans.

She gets a gift from Ingrid – a hand-sewn sweater that apparently got coffee spilled on it during shipping and she has to wash it. It shrinks and the coffee stain hasn't left. She doesn't dare use the word 'luckily' to describe the fact that her other gifts weren't ruined. Killian sends her a collection of seashells, with a note telling her that he gathered them himself.

She spends the little money she kept aside on a grand meal and many boxes of pop-tarts for Christmas. She calls Killian as she eats one of them, teasing him about eating her favourite “sugar-coated sugar,” as he called them once.

It's still late for Killian, but he talks to her even longer this time.

“What about your family?” she asks.

“It's four in the morning, Swan. If anyone's awake they're probably sneaking around the kitchen for a 'very-late-night' snack.”

She's the one falling asleep to him talking to her that night.

Just five years ago, Emma would watch the ads on TV and everywhere else talk about “family time”, or a “time to share the love”, and they would wash over her like everything else did in her life. She was the one everyone else counted on to not take the days off during holidays. But since reconnecting with Ingrid and making new friends in Ruby and the Nolans, Emma got slowly used to being part of something. A family, a company, where she learned to appreciate that time again. A time when she would go shopping for someone other than herself, when it wouldn't be a given that she would work on a holiday, when she would expect it just for the extra time and coziness she would live with someone else.

Now the commercials hit as hard as they did when she was seventeen and homeless; eighteen and in prison; nineteen and alone.

Being loved and thought of has really spoiled her, hasn't it?

She barely has the heart to call Ingrid when it's the latter's time to change the year. They wish each other a happy new year, and she feels glad that there's a lot of celebration going on where Ingrid is, so Ingrid doesn't get the time to truly see how difficult it is for Emma, to see what she's missing and all for a stupid lack of money.

At eleven in her own time, Emma breaks down crying in her bed.

She feels so alone. The past few years of reconnection with Ingrid and having new friends seem to weigh nothing over the emptiness she feels now. She didn't even have the heart to decorate her house this year.

She lies curled up in bed, hoping she can fall asleep before she surely hears the neighbors start the countdown, but, of course, no such luck.

Instead, four minutes before midnight, she gets an sms from Killian. An sms?

 _Turn wifi on_ , he tells her.

Breathing shakily, her throat thick with sobs, she turns it on but is still surprised to immediately receive a video call from him.

She checks the time, and tiredly tries to do the math. It's four minutes to five in the morning there. What is he doing?

She accepts the call, and her first glimpse of Killian is his tired but smug face. As he gets a good look at her, though, his face falls.

“Oh, Swan...”

She bursts into sobs again. He doesn't speak, but from the few glances she gets of him until she calms down, she knows he's waiting patiently.

She wishes she could reach her arms into the screen. She knows that his would hold her back.

She knows.

She gets her breathing under control and she looks at him, wiping away her tears.

“Thank you,” she says, and he smiles softly.

Damn it, that smile. She almost starts crying again, but he takes pity on her and looks somewhere away.

“It's thirty seconds now. Do you want me to count with you?”

“Yes, please.”

He smiles again, still softly but a bit more cheerfully now.

The connection lags two seconds, according to her neighbors' countdown. But the two seconds between the cheers across the wall and Killian popping a confetti cannon in front of the camera are theirs and theirs alone.

“Happy New Year!” he says.

His smile is so bright. Her tear-stained face in the preview looks so out of place, it feels wrong.

“You stayed up,” she says, voice harsh from crying.

“I... woke up. I mean, I went to sleep a bit early, and even I would say two is early for New Year's, so I snuck in a few hours of sleep before the alarm went off.”

He did it for her.

How wrong is it to wish she could kiss him now?

Her words will have to do.

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“I wouldn't forgive myself if I let you change the year alone. Especially after you told me what you didn't tell your friends. Losing a bit of sleep is nothing.”

Her friends. He says it as if he's not one of them.

Well, he's not in _that_ group of friends, but he belongs in that category.

Only that, though? Just a friend?

Once again, he stays up with her. He's properly prepared – snacks and music and lights and, well, soda, considering how late it is there – and she just feels stupid all she has is the sugar-coated sugar.

“Perhaps I chose the wrong flavor,” he says. “If I visit Boston one day you'll get me your favorites and I'll taste them all.”

Her heart flutters at the idea of him visiting. She's tempted to correct his 'if' with a 'when'. Because she wants him there. She wants it to be certain.

But she decides to keep it low for tonight. He already gave her the best surprise she could have had.

Perhaps she loves him.

But she's known better than to hang onto hope.

The last thing she remembers seeing is the view from his window, at the tiny show of the sky getting brighter.

The last thing she remembers hearing is him singing Auld Lang Syne.

None of them ask, and none of them organizes anything more, but their video calls become daily. Depending on Killian's schedule, of course, they talk from ten minutes to three hours at a time. Even on very busy days, they manage to sneak in at least five minutes of talking, even if it's just voice chat.

Gerda is having health issues, forcing Ingrid to not visit at all nor call often, and Emma's work is still hectic. She manages to meet Ruby for drinks or the Nolans for dinner, but it's not on a constant basis like it used to be.

The only constant in her life is coming back tired from work and talk to Killian, who will stay up and chat no matter how late it is for him.

And he once told her he's an early bird.

It feels silly, but Emma can't help thinking of it as a compromise he's making to himself for her sake.

Killian tells her about his childhood; about his mother dying, his father leaving, and then nearly losing himself after losing his brother as well. How getting adopted saved him.

Emma tells him about Ingrid saving her. How she took a disillusioned kid with no family and gave her love and a home.

She tells him about being alone at seventeen and leaning on the wrong person. But her admitting that she has done time comes differently.

He tells her about losing his first love and resorting to things he is not proud of, including getting himself into a relationship that he knew would hurt him.

“I've done some stupid things myself,” she tells him.

“Well,” he replies, “I have a criminal record.”

She shrugs. “So do I.”

He actually raises his eyebrow. “Well, you can say we're equal in that.”

“Mm. I've done time.”

“Oh. Okay. You win.” He seems super casual about it.

“You don't mind? That I've been in jail?”

“Well, did you kill or otherwise harm someone innocent?”

“No.”

“Then, if you've moved on, who am I to judge?”

“What did you do?”

“Hacking, breaking and entering...”

She was a thief herself, but she didn't expect to find such a kindred spirit in him in that way – as well. “What? What for?”

His brows furrow. “Nothing too dangerous, and I was too stupid to think rationally, and it was a very difficult time.” He pauses for a while, then looks at her seriously. “I was an alcoholic. I've been totally clean for about six months now. It had only lead me to make more stupid decisions.”

“Well, you're working through it, right?”

He smiles at her, that smile that always threatens to rip her to pieces. “Aye. I never believed it at first, but it gets easier.”

It's always easier when one is not soul-crushingly alone, she thinks.

She had underestimated him and how much he understood what being alone can do to someone. Conversation flows easier the more they talk, and in early May, he surprises her by telling her he's thinking about visiting her.

Emma immediately offers to let him stay with her.

She fakes a broken connection to recover from the smile he gives her. Jesus. How will she handle it when they're face-to-face?

They come to a mutual understanding; neither thought light of their first kiss, but both knowing of each other's pasts, they decide to take things especially slow.

She hasn't been so excited to count the days for something good since the first time Ingrid visited.

She drives her Bug to pick him up from the airport, but it breaks down midway there. A long string of curses and many calls to a service center later, she manages to send Killian a text letting him know she'll be late.

After a tow truck takes her car away for service, she takes a cab for the rest of the way to the airport, only to find that her message to Killian hasn't been received, and that his flight has just landed, nearly an hour late.

However, he looks fresh and cheerful when he exits arrivals. Even from afar, she can already feel his smile turning her knees into jelly. She steels herself to at least walk normally to him.

They embrace and it's as if a weight is lifted off her shoulders. And if she judged by his face, it looks the same for him.

His eyes trail to her lips, and she gives him a quick peck.


	10. Killian Jones, October 19th 2015 – May 19th 2016

Killian only holds back because Emma does; if she gave him any indication, he'd be really reaching into the kiss. She pulls back gently, her cheeks having gone slightly red.

He directs his eyes back into hers to distract himself from the fact that she either enjoyed the kiss a lot, or didn't enjoy it at all. He's about to smile at her when he sees Eloise from the corner of his eye and turns to her. She's looking at them with her typical cold expression that hides a ton of judgement underneath.

He swallows his sigh for Emma's sake; he's so tired of Eloise and her everything. He shrugs at her casually. Did she actually expect something from him?

And if she did, does he care anymore?

He turns back to Emma. “Don't worry,” he says, hoping Eloise's appearance didn't dampen the mood, and a thought jumps into words before he has the time to stop it. "Wanna add me on Facebook? It's Killian Jones, if, _if_ you're interested...” _To do what? Find something to tell her, find something!_ “We can share favourite songs."

Emma snorts, amused. "Like we're in high school?"

He doesn't have the best memories from high school, but he remembers enough about that awkwardness to know he feels similarly now. "I won't stalk you if you don't add me, just saying."

His stomach nearly does a flip when Emma smirks at him. She reaches into her belt bag and takes out her phone, which immediately slips from her fingers.

"Shit," she says. When she picks it up, they both can see that the screen cracked a bit. "Shit!"

"Oh. I feel as if I've caused that." As if he hasn't made things awkward enough.

Emma shakes her head. "It's replaceable. Don't worry. Killian Jones, you said?"

His chest feels warm at the sound of his full name in her voice. He should stop her; even in the slightest chance that she's actually interested, he's not the best person for any kind of connection.

But Emma is quick with her phone and says, "Friend request sent,” and he nearly leans down to kiss her again. “So we can chat about hot, new releases," she adds, still sounding amused.

He's about to ask for her last name. His battery is dying and he probably won't have the time to open the app before his phone turns off, and now that she did add him, his curiosity is skyrocketing.

"Hey," an older woman calls at Emma from the side. The woman looks at him with a slightly cautious glare, and looks a bit alike with Emma.

"Coming," Emma tells her. "So, we'll keep in touch," she tells him, actually pointing at him with her phone.

He just smiles in response, giving her a slight wave goodbye.

Watching them leave, his eye catches Eloise pouting, keeping her arms folded and staring at him from afar. He snorts and takes out his phone, impatient to accept Emma's request and find out her full name.

Instead of the Facebook app, he accidentally opens the camera, just as Klaus Meine walks right by him. He sees Killian, phone in hand, stops walking, and smiles.

"S-Selfie?" is all Killian can say, shocked.

He doesn't even see Eloise walk furiously towards him, his eyes fixed on the perfect selfie he got with the lead singer of the group they just watched perform.

"What was all that about?" Eloise says upon reaching him.

Killian looks at her, retort ready. " _That_ was me taking a selfie with Klaus Fucking Meine."

Eloise scoffs. "You were kissing that bitch."

"Oh, come on,” he taunts her. “You're just jealous you didn't get a selfie."

"I'm serious," she says, her 's' whistling through her teeth.

"Serious? About what? We're just fucking, and you know that. You treat me like a piece of meat and you expect full commitment on my side? Maybe you're thinking of the wrong woman as a 'bitch'."

Eloise is speechless. And he is suddenly feeling powerful.

"You know what? Fuck that. We're done. You drive back to Brighton, I'm not gonna put up with a return trip if you're involved."

"And what are you gonna do?" she spits back at him.

"We're right in the center of town. I can afford to stay in a hotel for one night." He starts leaving.

"It's late! You'll get charged double!" She hasn't even taken a step towards him – she's waiting for _him_ to go back to her.

She can wait all she wants.

He turns towards her, walking backwards. "I don't give a bloody damn," he tells her, then turns forward and leaves.

He leaves her.

How did he forget how calmer his nights are without her? The receptionist doesn't even charge him double – they'd just prepared a room that got cancelled last minute, and providing Killian leaves on time the next morning, it's just the standard price.

The room is nice, yet his mind is still going back to Eloise.

Damn, he left her. He made it.

And all because Emma was bold enough to kiss a damn perfect stranger.

He picks up his phone, now connected to a charger the hotel offered. Emma's friend request is right at the top of his notifications.

He smiles as he accepts.

His first day away from Eloise brings to the forefront how their relationship was way, way more than sex, only in a bad way. How he'd go to sleep some nights, nearly shaking with despair to go buy a bottle and with fear that Eloise wouldn't react well to him doing that. How that bled through to other parts about his life, how _he_ had let her control it, and how she jumped at the chance to do so. He has a full day on his own to reflect on his thoughts and worries with a clear mind. 

It ends on one conclusion; reconciling with family.

Nemo greets him back with open arms, and though Shakespeare keeps a collected face, he embraces Killian warmly too.

He spends the night there, falling asleep at the sight of his old drawings on the wall of his old bedroom. He hasn't picked up a pencil in some time...

Nemo doesn't ask anything the next morning. He's just happy Killian is back and willing to connect, and gets him to try playing chess with him, his new hobby. Killian doesn't even have the nerve to joke about Nemo's apparent mid-life crisis.

Once again, he's being more than Killian deserves. But maybe, once again, Killian can work towards being a man deserving of that love.

Before lunch, he's found himself with a picture of a forest landscape open on his phone, sketching from reference, when he receives a video call from Emma.

His heart speeds up. His hand is shaking slightly as he picks up the phone and looks at the screen, itching to tap “Accept”. He runs to the bathroom, making sure he's presentable, then back at his room, settles on his chair and accepts the call.

Her face fills the screen, and he gives her a cocky smile. She looks fresh from sleep; a different sight from the one in the concert, but what a sight still.

“Good morning,” he says. Is it? “Or afternoon? Have you gone back yet?”

“Yeah,” Emma says, smiling wide, “I arrived last night.”

“How was your trip?”

“A bit more tiring than I'm used to. But safe.”

“Than you're used to? You do it often?”

Emma explains about her extended family in Norway, her visits there a few times a year, and being used to long flights.

He finds himself feeling a little jealous. The only two times he travelled abroad brought years of bad fortune on him.

Emma definitely seems to hold something back, but he pays no mind; his closet has no fewer skeletons. They start chatting about music and end up talking about their plans for the holidays.

Time flies by and it's only when he hears Nemo call for lunch that he realizes they've been talking for an hour.

Bloody hell, he thinks, why do they have to eat so early?

He excuses himself, telling her he'll see her soon, and he can't help noticing how she seems to be holding back something again. He hopes he didn't disappoint her, and ends the call.

He looks at her name on his screen and he nearly taps it to call her again.

He locks his phone and puts it down. _Wait a few days, give her time,_ he thinks.

He goes back to his apartment that same evening, and there's a box of the stuff he kept at Eloise's place. He checks the drawers he kept for her, and they're empty as well. Eloise's spare key is inside the box, with a note for him to not bother with his spare key of her place, as she'll be changing the locks.

He actually feels surprised. That's really mature of her, and he doesn't have to see her again.

Maybe that's what she wants too. Better for both of them.

Before he goes to sleep he starts looking for therapists, and though he doesn't contact anyone yet, he considers it a step towards the right direction. He'll get there.

He calls Emma three days later, and before he's even noticed it, they develop a schedule, chatting two times a week. He wishes to talk to her more often, but he still sees the reserved expression he knows too well on her face, and he knows she needs time. Of course, half the time it's her calling him, and she participates in conversation as much as he does.

She wants it, he knows. She's just taking it slow, and if he's honest, he needs slow too. What he had with Eloise may have led to him meeting Emma, but it still had an impact on him – and not that long after he lost the woman he loved, too.

The same afternoon he makes an appointment with a new therapist – and dreading it, considering the pile of information he'd have to give them – he gets a call from an unknown number.

“Hello?”

“Is this Killian Jones?”

“Who is it?”

“My name is George Rogers, I'm a private detective. Could you confirm your name, please?”

The detective is looking into Milah's murder. He's – lawfully – found suspicious contacts between Gold, his false witnesses and two now convicted criminals in the States, and he's opening her case. Killian's case too, considering he was assaulted as well.

Killian can barely speak. He'd lost all hope that Gold would receive any judgement from anyone but Killian himself. He thought he'd just have to live with the burden that Milah's murderer walks the streets free until he would grow desperate enough to get a gun and kill him himself.

He agrees to meet with the detective at his office and he looks at his phone when he hangs up, catching his shocked expression on the reflection, unable to even close his mouth.

When Killian opens the door to Rogers' office, he freezes as he sees the man.

Rogers just gives him a warm smile. “Mr. Jones.” Then he nods at Killian's stunned silence. “I know.”

The resemblance is uncanny; Rogers has a few grey streaks and more wrinkles, so Killian feels as if he's looking into what he'll look like about ten years from now. Physically, at least.

Rogers has acquired the testimony Killian gave when he was still at the hospital, and is trying to piece the crime together and prove the two convicted criminals are the two bodyguards Gold had hired that fateful day. With a bit of luck and skill, he can lead them to a confession. They're already in prison and it seems that Gold's finances haven't been going well lately. If he hasn't been keeping his false witnesses content, they may not be hard to persuade.

Rogers excuses himself for a moment, and Killian looks dumbfounded at the chessboard Rogers has set on his desk. Nemo didn't pick the habit up, but Killian did. He starts playing on his own, trying to distract himself from the pile of questions for Rogers and the anxiety that is building up. He doesn't want to let himself hope for Gold's arrest; he won't be able to deal with the result of the case going cold again.

“Do you play?” Rogers asks, nodding at the board.

Killian shrugs. “I started a few weeks ago. I play a bit online to...” He looks up at him, still a bit shocked at their physical resemblance. “You said you opened this case. Why?”

Rogers sits down at his desk. “It's my job. I was hired to look into it.”

“By whom?”

“Confidentiality, mate. I was looking Gold up, and after some digging I found out you had accused him for murder and assault.”

“I tried.”

Rogers shakes his head. “That bastard's a few million pounds away from starting a bloody mob. Hiring a few false witnesses is a piece of cake for him. Unfortunately for him, he can't cover all his sources and expenses. Questions start piling; where did he get all that money, and where are they going to? Especially now that his businesses are supposed to be failing.”

Rogers can't promise anything, but he looks determined to do his best. Killian doesn't allow himself any hope. He focuses on his life; going back to work with Shakespeare, finding a new AA group, starting therapy again, and talking to Emma.

He doesn't realize how much he's changing his own life until Emma points out that he told her once he's an early bird, yet there he is at two in the morning his time, chatting with her. And indeed, Shakespeare was willing to give him a late shift, but Killian didn't mind it that much either. He shifts the conversation to her choice of snack, making a sour face at the pop-tart in her hand.

“How can you eat that thing? It's like sugar-coated sugar,” he teases her.

Emma laughs, saying it's European candies that need a good dose of sugar instead.

With Christmas approaching, Rogers takes time off officially but keeps doing some work from home, and he calls Killian one evening to discuss some details about his testimony.

Killian finds a taxi fast, which manages to avoid all traffic and red lights and he arrives early at Rogers'. He's in a bathrobe and his hair is wet when he opens his door.

“You're early,” he says. “Come in.”

Killian steps in, immediately noticing the girl sitting cross-legged in front of a coffee table, playing chess.

“That's my daughter, Alice. Perhaps she can teach you a couple tricks,” Rogers says, smiling. “I'll be back in a minute.” He disappears behind a door.

“Wow,” Alice says, looking at him. “You do look like papa. He told me so but I didn't believe him.” She turns innocently to her chessboard.

A lump forms in Killian's throat; neither he nor Rogers commented much on their resemblance, but with another person so close to Rogers pointing it out, he can't help the possibilities that fill his thoughts. His deadbeat father had already left two children; what would one more before them change anything?

Could it really be?

“Can I ask you something?” Killian asks when Rogers is done with his questions. “How old are you?”

Rogers looks a bit taken aback. “Forty-five. Why?”

Thirteen years older than him. Which means his father would've been fourteen when Rogers was born. Unlikely, but still...

“Were you born here?”

Rogers sits back in his chair, his eyebrow raised. “Actually, I was born in Seattle, but my folks moved us back to Plymouth when I was five.” He pauses. “Are you curious...” he points between their faces.

Killian shrugs, but relaxes. The possibility of his father, at thirteen years old, travelling to Seattle and impregnating a woman are downright impossible.

“I was also curious, when I found your file and saw your picture. But I see a lot of people in my line of work, and trust me, there is a notable number of almost twins out there.”

Feeling comforted, but still vulnerable, Killian confesses. “It's just... my father was not much of a parent. I wouldn't put it past him to have another child he never mentioned to us.”

“I understand. I can assure you, though, it's just a coincidence.”

“It's also that... my mother's name was Alice.” He smiles at that, though.

“Oh. That is peculiar. But I simply liked the name for my daughter, and it's not like it's a super rare name.” He then turns to look at the clock as a thunder rumbles somewhere not too far. “I'll be making some dinner, would you like to stay?”

“No, it's alright.”

“You can either help, if you want, or keep Alice company as she teaches you tricks.” Rogers rubs at Alice's back, who has come to stand next to her father.

“How long has she been playing?”

“Since before I could read,” she says, proudly crossing her arms.

Killian smiles at her.

“For real,” Rogers says. “She was still in preschool when I started teaching her. That's more than six years of experience.”

“Which is why I always beat you,” Alice tells him.

Killian stands up. “Then I have no hope against you. Thanks for the offer, but you've already done enough.”

“Come on, mate, it's pouring rain outside.”

Killian smiles a little wider. “I have a good feeling about it.”

Indeed, the rain slows to a drizzle and the taxi he calls arrives quickly.

Most of his nights for the past four years have been plagued by the thought that he'd never see Gold pay for his crimes. He had a few nights of blissful calm, either brought by alcohol or the occasional good time the last couple months, but this is the first night that he feels at least relieved. Not confident or hopeful, yet; he knows better than that.

Emma confesses to him that she won't be spending Christmas with her extended family and that she lied to her friends so that they wouldn't cancel their plans for her sake.

He sneakily looks into flights for Boston while he's still on chat with Emma; a cold dread spreads in him when he's reminded of what both his trips to the States caused him.

He goes to bed very late that night, hating himself. Emma needs someone to spend the holidays with, she _wants_ someone, and he's too afraid of his own superstitions to be that someone for her. And the worst part is, he _used_ to be lucky. He knows what's it like to throw caution to the wind and still everything coming out fine. It's the first time in four years that he's started to feel that things have started going well. He's too afraid to push his luck.

He resorts to sending her a collection of his favourite seashells that he's gathered over the years as a gift. He's happy to hear it arrives in time, and he has a celebratory video chat with Emma on Christmas day, going along with her and her pop-tarts.

He regrets not going to Boston, or at least offering to help pay her tickets so she could come visit him, when it's New Years Eve and he has to show a happy face for his family while he knows Emma is all alone.

Just two hours before midnight his time, he takes Nemo's car and manages to find an open toy store. The owner says Killian is the luckiest bastard of the year, as he was about to close for the night. Killian buys a confetti cannon, thanks him, and wishes him a happy new year.

He allows himself exactly two hours of celebrating with his family before he goes to bed. He wakes up at half past four and sets everything up for a surprise celebration for Emma, checking at least three times that he's got his timezones right and it's still before midnight in Boston.

He starts calling her at quarter to five, but she's not online. Then again at ten to five. When she doesn't answer at five to five, he sends her an SMS to turn her WiFi on. As he waits for her to become active, he prepares to tease her for falling asleep on the one night most people want to stay up. He sets into a smug face and calls her immediately after her dot turns green.

His face falls when she accepts his call and he sees her tear-stained face, broken by a sorrowful expression.

“Oh, Swan,” he says.

Emma bursts into sobs. He waits for her, he doesn't give a damn if they miss the countdown, they can do one of their own. As long as Emma is alright.

As her sobs slow down, he feels tears in his own eyes. How he wishes he could reach over and hold her.

What a coward he was. When she wipes away her tears, he gives a silent promise to never let her experience anything like that again.

“Thank you,” Emma says.

Killian looks at the clock he's set up. “It's thirty seconds now. Do you want me to count with you?”

“Yes, please.”

He sees the smile on his preview turn more cheerful.

Emma looks at him, her smile widening as the seconds go down, contrasting her red and puffy eyes.

Killian pops the confetti cannon, but his eyes never leave her reflection. “Happy New Year!” he says.

“You stayed up,” she says.

“I... woke up,” he admits. “I mean, I went to sleep a bit early, and even I would say two is early for New Year's, so I snuck in a few hours of sleep before the alarm went off.”

Her face is so vulnerable, and the wish to hold her overwhelms him.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” she says.

“I wouldn't forgive myself if I let you change the year alone.” _Nor if I let it happen again_. “Especially after you told me what you didn't tell your friends. Losing a bit of sleep is nothing.”

He has a whole array of snacks prepared for his late night with her, but he sets it aside when she says that all she has is the few pop-tarts left from Christmas.

She seems to love them so much. “Perhaps I chose the wrong flavor,” he says. “If I visit Boston one day you'll get me all kinds and I'll taste them all.”

He almost says 'when' instead of 'if'. But he has to be rational; financially he cannot yet support a trip, and he owes Emma an honest promise only when it's possible.

There's not much he's wanted from life; and by now he's learned to not push for more than he has. But is it too much to think that he's in love with her? That he's reminded what it feels like, to feel his heart full of love and not thirsty for revenge?

Is it too much to hope he can have something with her?

He makes himself some coffee, determined to stay with her until _she_ falls asleep. Her eyes are drooping closed when he takes the phone to the window, to show her the lighter blue streak of the early sunrise. Her eyes are already closed when he sits back and sings _Auld Lang Syne_ to her. When the song ends, he lets a few seconds go by before he calls her name once.

When there's no response, he ends the call and sends her “Happy new year, love,” in text.

The new year arrives promising. Only three days in, Rogers calls him to tell him one of Gold's fake witnesses confessed.

Killian needs to attend two sets of trials; one for Milah's murder, and one for the assault against him. Both are draining, but Nemo is beside him, and Killian bursts into tears when Gold gets life sentence.

He thinks about Milah's boy, Jack; he's barely fifteen years old, and he's dealing with what Killian had hoped he never would; seeing one – or in his case, probably both – of his parents as a monster. Gold had remarried; right after divorcing him, Belle, his now second ex-wife, was the one who had hired Rogers to look into Gold. She attested against Gold in the trial, but she seemed to care a lot for the boy.

Three weeks later he hears that Belle took custody of Jack. Killian is sure the boy hates him already; all he can do is hope his stepmother will care and provide for him.

His heart had stopped aching for revenge, but that doesn't mean it's not relieved that a murderer who chose to ruin him is now behind bars.

And with Emma, it soars. Through those emotionally taxing months, talking to her is his one constant.

Before either he or Emma realize it, their chats become a daily habit, even when there's little to say. Sometimes they just synchronize their Netflix to watch something together. Sometimes just each other's presence there on the phone screen is enough while doing housework.

Killian has completely switched to late shift at Shakespeare's boat rental, so that he can stay up late and talk with Emma after she's done with her shift.

For years, his mind was consumed with thoughts of revenge. His consciousness felt lighter, but his heart still felt empty after Gold was convicted. With Emma, he remembers how it feels like to care for someone that way, the way he did before Gold took that away from him.

Emma is in no way a replacement for Milah; but he knows it's time he moved on, and he can see in her someone he can do that with. Someone he can be happy with. Milah would want him to be happy, as he would want that for her.

Killian shares the story of his family slowly coming apart; his mother dying, his father leaving, and the final straw when his brother died. He tells her how he was nearly lost himself, how he has no idea where he'd be if Nemo hadn't, quite literally, saved him.

Emma shares her story of growing up an orphan, of being adopted and finally feeling she belonged, until her adopted mother was deported and she had to fend for herself, resorting to trusting the wrong person.

It's yet another time that Killian wishes he could reach into the screen and hold her. It could've been him, the one who trusted the wrong person and lost everything. And Emma is still standing on her feet.

He tells her about Eloise, she tells him about having done time – which makes her current standing even more admirable. Where would he be if his lawyer hadn't managed to get him on probation for breaking and entering on that stupid, desperate night?

He tells her about staying off of alcohol. How he'd thought he'd never stay clean for good. What he doesn't tell her is that it happened to be that he got the strength to keep up his sobriety just after he met her.

He loves her, he knows that. And he doesn't think lightly of their kiss at the concert, but he's not sure she's ready to hear she's had such a positive impact in his life.

And all because he was cheerful enough to hum a song and Emma happened to hear it.

With his emotions muddled by the trial, the stress, the anticipation for the results, and eventually the worry for Milah's son, he is surprised to realize it's late April and he can afford much, much more than a trip to Boston, thanks to the eighty thousand pounds he got from Gold as compensation for losing his hand.

He chooses to not wait too long for Emma. He wants her, and he wants to be good enough for her. Even though he'll need time for that, and he feels she's not ready for anything too quick either, he feels excited to meet her again.

When he tells her he's thinking of visiting her in May, she immediately offers her place for him to stay at.

His heart soars, he smiles widely – and Emma's connection cuts off.

When she comes back in, her smile reflects his. It's a relieving conversation that night, to tell each other that they want something more, but that they both need to take things slow. And one first visit can clear the path, so to speak.

He's still slightly nervous to get on the plane; he treated himself to a first class seat, however – not provoking karma by sneaking into someone else's unclaimed seats this time – and he's surprised to be awaken by a flight attendant when they've already landed at Logan Airport. There were apparently disturbances that delayed landing for an hour, and he slept peacefully through it all.

He turns on his phone and he feels a little relieved seeing Emma's message that she would have to be late. At least she wasn't left to wait for him.

He spots her as soon as the automatic doors leading out of arrivals open. She smiles and waves at him.

When they embrace, his chest feels lighter than it's felt in years. He pulls back and looks at her calm, happy face, then his gaze drops to her lips.

She closes her eyes when she pulls up to give him a peck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, things start happening! And not just with them getting together at last!


	11. Emma Swan and Killian Jones, May 19th – May 25th 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote a short epilogue for the end, so chapter count and total word count has gone up again! XD

When they pull apart, the strap on Killian's bag breaks and he hustles to keep it from dropping to the floor. Emma quickly finds an empty luggage cart that looks forgotten and brings it to him.

“It's not that heavy,” he says. “But thank you.”

As they start rolling it towards the exit Emma says, “You got my message?”

“Aye. Everything all right?”

“My car broke down. We'll need to take the subway-”

“Emma?”

They both turn at the sound. Emma's face breaks into a slight smile as she recognizes Jefferson and his daughter Grace, two neighbors from her block. They had gone on a weekend trip and offer Emma and Killian a ride home.

“That was lucky,” Killian comments to her as they get in the car.

Emma takes the week off work; she meant it when she said she wants things to go slow, but there's so many actual things she wants to do with Killian.

As in, spend her time on.

Killian is still reserved; the broken bag strap and the feeling of jet lag as soon as he steps into Emma's apartment are not signs he considers good.

Maybe that will help more in encouraging him to go slow. He needs that time, but it's still not the easiest thing.

Conversation flows as naturally as it did in their video calls. When they finally decide to call it a night at three in the morning, Killian jokes about how they're finally getting sleepy at the same time.

Emma offers to take the couch and let him sleep in her bed, but Killian isn't having it.

He doesn't tell her he has the bad feeling he'll break it the first time he sits on it.

Emma takes him for late breakfast at her favourite coffee shop – the one she met Ruby at, in fact – and they eat in comfortable silence. It's not easy for either of them to admit that the previous night they spent about an hour each, lying in their respective beds and looking at the door separating them, with a little voice in their heads telling them to go knock on it.

They exit the coffee shop and Killian notices how Emma, at first on his left side, swaps so she can walk on his right side. Following her, he looks more at her relaxed hand on her side than on the road – she's the one who knows the city, either way. He's so surprised when she reaches to take his hand in hers that he doesn't wrap his fingers around hers until she looks at him and smiles.

Emma nearly teasingly asks him why he thought she swapped sides.

That night, Emma lies in her bed, still feeling guilty she didn't insist that Killian should be sleeping there, and still looking at the door separating them, as if it would give her the courage to go to him. Would he be asleep already? Would he even be jet-lagged?

Feeling alert, she jumps up when she hears soft noises from the other side. She runs to the door and puts her ear on it; the sound of the tap being turned on, then off, then a glass being put down.

She pulls away, quickly runs her fingers through her hair, and opens the door.

Killian looks at her, almost guiltily. “I... got thirsty,” he says. “Did I wake you up?”

“With the running water? Hardly. It's just... you know, we were doing things all day and I still feel a little restless.”

He rubs his forehead. “I was rolling around until I decided to come get some water. I don't think I'll be sleeping early tonight.”

_If only there was another reason for that._

“Water won't get you through the night. You need something stronger.”

He swallows hard. “Swan.”

“I'm just talking about hot chocolate,” she says casually, hoping her panic didn't show. Not that she didn't have the instinctual thought to add some rum to it; she'll have to settle for cinnamon, and get used to it for now. “Cinnamon?”

Killian can't lie, he feels a little nervous. One ought to, he thinks, when being welcomed as a guest somewhere. But Emma didn't intend to make a joke about his rehab, nor did she try to get him to drink, though she had the perfect opportunity to.

Since he lost his hand, he's found himself wearing his prosthetic hook over it more and more, only exposing his arm in the presence of his family or when he had to for check-ups and security reasons. It feels special that he's sitting on Emma's couch now, with his stump out in the open, casually watching her as she moves around her kitchen preparing their chocolates.

She hasn't even commented on it. She saw it at some point during their video calls, but didn't react nor ask anything about it.

“I put less sugar in yours,” she says as she gives him the cup, “for your 'bitter' tooth.”

He smirks at her.

“But if you change your mind...” she points at a bag of marshmallows over on the kitchen counter, then sits next to him.

It's warm enough for a t-shirt and shorts, but the warmth from the cup feels comfortable, cozy. Homey.

“Would you mind, if I shared something?” he says.

She shakes her head, a soft smile on her face.

“I never told you about this.” He raises his left arm. “How come you never asked?”

“It's your business. If you wanted to talk about it... I mean, I'm here, if you want now.”

“I lost it nearly five years ago. It was-” A lump forms in his throat, and he looks down. Bloody damn, it still hurts.

“It's okay. Don't pressure yourself.”

“You remember I told you I went through a dark phase? Losing my hand was the start. And it's... connected to so many negative thoughts that I wanted hidden and tucked away. I rarely let people see it, even with- with that woman I was with, I never took the brace off fully.”

And he lets Emma see it. She breathes out slowly.

“So I just... wanted to thank you for your discretion. It means a lot to me, to be myself without having to worry about someone's nosy looks.”

“I know nosiness. I think sometimes we carry our pain on our faces too, and that can attract a similar, kind of way, nosiness.”

He finally looks at her.

“Prison teaches you a few things,” she admits.

“I've got to give it to you,” he says. “I don't know where I'd be now if I had gone in jail for that time for breaking and entering.” He purses his lips. “I'd probably still be in there. But you...” He points around her flat; he didn't know bail bonds agents make that much money, and she still gets to travel to Europe at least once every year.

“I started with a yellow Bug, don't forget,” she points out. “After a few too close hits, you just start going with what you have, you know?”

He does, very well so.

They finish their chocolates, and Emma takes his cup to put it on the coffee table with hers; she then sits back on the couch, and they just look at each other in the soft light from across the kitchen.

They don't take their eyes off each other when Emma wraps her fingers around his. She moves forward and captures his lips in hers, and he sighs at the way the chocolate tastes from her; it's the sweetest flavour and he can't complain. Besides, it's not just his lips that respond to that taste.

He turns a bit to the side, disguising his effort to hide his excitement as a way to wrap his other arm around her middle.

Emma holds his face, breathing hard into his mouth when their lips pull apart. She's damn near to push him back and climb astride him. His hand is on the small of her back and moves, dragging her shirt up a bit and she sighs at the touch of his fingers on her skin.

They pull away together, though still keeping close. Her hands go to wrap around his neck now, and he lowers his hand again, now resting on the fabric over her hips.

“Not ready yet,” she whispers.

He leaves one small kiss on the corner of her lips. A consolation, a tease, or a thank-you? She moves a bit, opening her eyes to look at him.

Holy hell, the way he just _looks_ at her.

 _Look, look, look._ She's too emotional and horny to remember why there's something haunting about that word.

She kisses him again, short but soft, then she moves again, settling her head on his shoulder. He wraps his arm around her, hand resting on her shoulder, left arm resting on his lap.

She moves her hand slowly, giving him time, allowing him to see; he doesn't stop, doesn't move. Her hand rests over his blunted wrist, and she can feel him exhale deep. He leaves a soft kiss on her hair, and she has to close her eyes to stop the tears before they fall.

Maybe it's just her idea that something warm and wet seems to land on the crown of her head.

Killian shakes her awake about two hours later.

“Hey, love,” he tells her, and she straightens up lazily. “I think we might need to lie a bit more comfortably.”

He nearly shivers in his sleepiness; did he say too much?

“I think I hear your bed calling for you,” he says teasingly. There. That should do.

“Hmm,” she mumbles and presses her forehead on his shoulder, softly patting his other shoulder with her hand. “Goodnight,” she says. She stands up, grunting softly, then gives him one last look before she walks through her door, leaving it ajar.

Suddenly feeling sleepy but not sore from sleeping seated up with Emma's head on his shoulder, he lies down on the couch and looks at his left arm.

The way she touched it, held it... bloody hell, he'll start crying again. It was all he didn't know he needed. He wasn't sure what to expect in his days here, but he certainly didn't expect to feel that wonderful, so carefree, so _loving_ and _loved_.

He loves her, and he's certain he feels her love. All from a simple touch, and not the one his body asked for, but the one Emma's soul offered.

Her soul. Her beautiful, wounded, caring soul.

Once again, he feels the spark of hope in his heart, the one that makes him want to put himself together again, to make himself worthy of such devotion.

He can only wish Emma already sees herself worthy of the same.

The days go by, quick but fulfilling. They still sleep in separate beds but they don't shy away from kisses. The feeling of that night carries over when they cuddle on the couch to watch each other's favourite films; Killian's right arm wraps around Emma's shoulders, and her hand reaches over to hold his left wrist.

They talk mostly about everything, allowing almost every thought out in the open, even about how they plan to continue. Maybe Emma will visit him in the summer, midway through her trip to Norway and/or back.

 _And_ , Killian thinks.

Maybe they can organize a vacation together.

“It's a shame there's really no middle for us to meet. Except Iceland, I guess,” Emma jokes.

There's one thing no-one comments on, even though it's the first time it happens for them both; usually, it was either stepping on poop or finding money on the street for, well, years at a time. It's the first time in their lives that both things may happen in the same day.

It's Killian's last morning in town; tonight he'll have to board a plane and hope his life won't fall apart again. Maybe third time's the charm.

They're walking down along a beach when they see a very young couple, probably teenagers even, run hand in hand to dive into the water, giggling as they do so. Killian turns to Emma and asks,

“I've been curious.”

“Hmm?”

“When was your first kiss?”

Emma huffs. First kiss in what way? “It's, uh... I guess you could say when I was eleven years old. It was in a game of spin the bottle, though I never got that boy's name.”

“That's a very specific memory.”

“Well, the whole thing kinda stuck with me. That was the luckiest day of my life.”

“How so?”

She smiles softly. “Ingrid adopted me.”

After a short pause, Killian says, “Spin the bottle, you said?” Then he stops walking. “When you were eleven?”

Emma turns to him, oblivious to his racing mind. “Yeah. Why?”

He's sure he must be looking at her like an idiot.

He is.

“Where were you living then?”

“Uh, still here. I was already living with Ingrid-”

“Emma, _my_ first kiss was in a game of spin the bottle. In the summer of 1995, I was in Boston, I visited a friend's birthday party... and I kissed a blonde girl whom I never talked to.”

Emma's eyes widen. She shakes her head, but amusement bubbles in her, especially seeing Killian's face light up as well. “No way.”

Killian just huffs a laugh.

“You were my first kiss?!” Emma says, unable to contain her smile. “Oh my God! What were the chances?”

“Of all people!”

Emma shakes her head again and continues walking. “It would be crazy, but, since you lived in London first, you wouldn't happen to have been dressed as a pirate on Halloween of 2000, would you?”

For one single second, Killian is glad for all the difficult years that led to him being able to construct a cool, indifferent exterior. For half that second, it hits him how _that_ was the day he considered his luckiest, when he got out of Silver's house and was moved to Nemo's... and it wasn't much later than that that Emma started getting into trouble, as she told him once.

He just shrugs. “No. Not much of a Halloween fan,” he says, struggling to keep his voice normal. He mentally screams at himself as Emma's brows furrow. _What kind of an answer was that?!_ he thinks.

Could it really be?

“You'd wish you were that pirate boy,” Emma says in a teasing tone. “He was so shy but just the way he looked at me has stayed with me.”

“What were you dressed as?” he asks.

She flinches a bit, still awkward at the memory, but smiling. “A zombie princess.”

 _Fuck_.

This time, not even the sight of the sea can calm his racing thoughts.

After the first time they met, Emma got adopted and Killian went through the worst time of his life. After the second, it was Killian's life who started going for the better while Emma struggled.

And then... then after they met in the concert, things were already bad for him, and probably good for her, and it switched. _Immediately_ after they met, he thinks, as he remembers Emma's still cracked phone screen.

Emma notices how lost in thought he is, and maybe it wasn't as good an idea as she thought, to confess so much.

“Was that weird?” she says, breaking him out of his thoughts.

“What?”

“That we kissed when we were little.”

Killian wants to slap himself; her nearly _worried_ face is little punishment for him right now. “No, no, no. I just...” The alternative thought that is also truth comes at him at the right moment. “I just thought that, today we will have one last kiss. For a little while, at least.”

Emma relaxes. “It doesn't have to be too long,” she says. “We can meet often and take it slow at the same time.”

Emma smiles, and Killian uses it as an excuse to keep her walking and her eyes hopefully away from his face. Words cannot describe how much he wants to both stop taking things slow and stop things entirely.

If it is true, if they've somehow been doing this to each other... he can't keep taking good things away from her.

And he's terrified to think that if she knows, she'll think the same.

He focuses on Emma and on making sure she doesn't get suspicious. He can act happy for a few more hours and pretend it's just that he'll miss her that gets him down, and not that he fears he'll have to stay away from her for good.

Despite his efforts, Emma notices his distress, but is none the wiser about the reasons. Is it because he felt weird about their first – very first – kiss, because he doesn't want to leave, or because he can't wait to?

She knows he's hiding something, and though she feels she knows him better than she'd know anyone else after just their few months of knowing each other, she can't read his mind.

Despite how much he can't seem to stop talking.

Killian tries to distract his thoughts by talking, and talking, and talking. It's halfway into the evening that he thinks it's as if he's compensating for later, for when he won't be able to tell her anything... because he'll have to cut himself out of her life.

On their ride to the airport, he allows the small heartbreak at the thought that he has to leave her. Emma is focused on the road and he looks outside his window. Used to the cars back home, he's thrown off at how he can't hold her hand when she's the one driving.

Emma keeps her eyes on the road, hands gripping hard on the wheel. Occasionally she throws glances at Killian, wishing the wheel was on the other side so they could hold hands.

Her worries disappear when they arrive one hour before his flight and he stays with her, talks to her and _holds_ her until she has to practically push him to the airport checkpoint fifteen minutes before his gate opens.

“It's a big airport,” she tells him.

“But you know it well, and you said my gate is very close.” He gives her that smile again that makes her melt.

“It's your flight to miss.” She leans towards him. “I wouldn't mind having you stay longer.”

He lets out a short laugh and kisses her, and she can't help feeling a deep longing in his kiss; with his departure so soon, it doesn't feel out of place, and she reciprocates, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“I'll miss you,” he says.

“Call me when you arrive,” Emma says. “No matter the time, I _will_ have WiFi on.”

She smiles, but she sees the reserved one he gives her back. He gives her one last, short kiss, then he turns for the surprisingly empty queue for the checkpoint.

His back at her, he finally crumbles and allows himself to think. He started out lucky, she unlucky. It swapped when they met at that birthday party when they were eleven, then at that Halloween party when they were seventeen.

Then... when was it? When did they meet again?

It must have been in New York City, before Milah was killed. Was Emma there? She told him once how she was very lucky to get the job she has now and to reunite with her adoptive mother only four years ago. Those same years that he spent mourning Milah and despairing over Gold not paying for his crime.

Then it was when they met at the concert. And all these days... they've been both lucky and unlucky. It's like with them being together, their luck didn't know which one to choose to bless.

Every time they met, their luck swapped. And especially for him, that meant that someone he loved died. He was lucky this time, between the concert and coming here, so it's no doubt that when he goes back, he'll be unlucky once again.

And Nemo...

Killian drops his head. Is this a punishment for allowing himself to fall in love again? But it's been a cycle of change since... since they were born? They were born very close to each other, weren't they?

As slow as he took his steps, there was no queue in front of him and he's crossed the belt barrier corridor in seconds. He picks up a basket for his backpack and notices a twenty dollar bill lying in the basket underneath.

Killian looks at the security guard in front of him. He just shrugs at him, smiling slightly.

“Find a penny...” the guard says.

Killian's gaze freezes at the bill.

No. He wasn't supposed to be lucky this time.

 _How_ does it work? If it's not just them meeting, or travelling to each other's countries, then what determines where the luck will go?

He looks back at Emma, who's still standing where he left her. She appears confused, then she makes a 'what' gesture with her hand.

“Are you alright, sir?”

He turns to look at the guard, who's now looking at him worried.

Of course he'd be worried, instead of annoyed at him, as well as the people behind him in the queue.

He's lucky, after a meeting with Emma. How-

He's ducking under the belt barrier before his thought is even complete.

It was not just them meeting.

It was the one thing they shared every time – a kiss.

How could he forget? The thing that has haunted him since Milah died – that before she did, the last person he'd kissed was a stranger who had been just as drunk as him. Drunk enough to not remember him, and not recognize him when she met him again.

Emma.

Emma is still confused when he reaches her, but he immediately leans down to leave one single long kiss on her lips.

“Just this last one,” he says.

“For now,” Emma says softly.

Killian just nods, then turns away before he's tempted to say 'For good luck'. The less she knows about it, the better.

He doesn't turn around to look at her this time, certain that she'll see the despair on his face if he does.


	12. Killian Jones, May 25th – June 22nd 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains depictions of alcohol relapse and a panic attack.

Killian finds a seat right next to his gate, anticipating the eventual announcement that his flight will be delayed. He leans forward, hoping his eyes are hidden enough so that no-one else can see his tears.

If only a delayed flight could be the worst he has to deal with. His apartment burning down and his landlord asking for a compensation from him. A broken limb. Losing _another_ limb. Anything, as long as nothing happens to anyone he cares for, or who cares for him.

He left the luck with her – he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he hadn't, but at the same time he's condemning everyone who's cared for him. Will and Tink, Shakespeare... Nemo.

His flight is delayed eventually, and Emma texts him about it. Killian tells her to go home and not to worry about him.

Her replying 'okay' seems bland, even for a text from Emma.

More tears fill his eyes as he thinks that they'll both have to get used to that. He has to stay away from her, now that he knows. Even if their relationship wasn't such long-distance, this... this... game of fate, or whatever it is, makes any relationship between them impossible. They can't keep stealing each other's luck, and knowing Emma, they can't keep chasing after the other to return the luck. They can't count kisses, and they can't keep risking each other's life stability.

At least, he's got the bad luck for good now. Anything that may happen may as well happen. Neither of them will have to deal with sudden change again. And Emma will never have to face any unfair hardship again.

He tries to comfort himself with the thought that he's the one who's been lucky the longest. Out of their nearly thirty-three years, twenty-two years plus seven months had been lucky for him, way more than half of the former. Emma, instead, had to deal with twenty-two and a half years of bad luck... though, no-one she ever cared for died?

She hasn't mentioned ever losing someone she loved – aside, of course, from never meeting loving parents in the first place until her foster mother adopted her – and, even though she's faced no fewer hardships than Killian has, it's a stark contrast to Killian's three big losses.

He raises his head, suddenly trying to think rationally. He snorts at his own thoughts. He's just witnessing a supernatural phenomenon he's never heard anything about before, and he's trying to apply logic to it.

But still, Emma has no few people she cares for – and he'd _never_ wish any harm to them to balance his losses – and... and? What should he ask for?

He tries to remember; the best thing that happened to him was being adopted by Nemo, after five years of bad luck – the longest he's gone with it. Similarly, after spending her first eleven years unlucky, Emma received the best news of her life by being adopted.

His tears having dried, he's now pacing around the waiting lounge.

Emma, again, after eleven years of bad luck, received good news by being reunited with her foster mother and finding a good job.

His luck after four years... his breakup with Eloise going smoothly, and Gold going to prison.

He rubs his forehead. Breaking up with Eloise in the first place and staying sober were good things too, but they were his own choices, only aided by his good luck.

Emma... after five years of good luck, her adoptive mother was deported, Emma had her heart broken and went to prison. Then, for those few months that she was unlucky... her job wasn't paying well and it was tiring, and she couldn't spend holidays with loved ones. It sucked, but compared to losing someone...

The bigger they come, the harder they fall?

Killian sighs, feeling a bit of the weight being lifted. He was lucky only for a few months now, could it be that the worst thing that may happen to him is anything but someone dying? If he had to not talk to his family again, even if he went to prison himself for whatever reason, as long as they were safe and happy, he would take it.

And Emma will stay happy as well. She'll probably not win any big lottery, but at least she'll have a comfortable life, with the occasional smile from Lady Luck.

He can live with that.

Though what scares him now is the thought of leaving everyone. He'll be a magnet now, and he can't be a burden to his family, and he can't ever risk Emma knowing what their kisses do – it's enough that he knows.

He has to step back, and slowly disconnect from everyone, for their own sake.

Perhaps, if they stop caring about him too, his bad luck won't touch them, no matter how bad it gets.

How ironic, he thinks. Just as he'd found the chance to fall in love again, to move on from his pain and emptiness, he now has to let it go. Talk about bad luck.

It's a rough trip back to England, not only because of the delay, the disturbances, his ears ringing all throughout, or his complete inability to sleep despite feeling exhausted, but mostly because of this last revelation.

What would it take to persuade Nemo to cut off all connections with him? Nemo saw an expressionless, unruly teenager with a sullied criminal record and gave him love and a chance at a happy life. Killian's stomach turns at the thought of pressing the right buttons to make Nemo and Shakespeare both hate him, and it wouldn't be effective anyway. He'd only manage to break Nemo's heart and make him think Killian got back into drinking again...

Another feeling of sickness overwhelms him at that thought. Really, how many relapses could Nemo handle?

Killian sighs. He's accustomed enough to feelings of self-loathing to know this particular one will never fade.

He calls the flight attendant and asks for a glass of whiskey.

One glass is not enough to muddle his thoughts, but of course the plane is full and there is nothing the flight attendant can do for his dysfunctional seat screen, so it's mostly thinking he can fill his time with.

He thinks about Emma and the secret promise he gave her, that he'd never allow her to feel alone and miserable again. Can he really choose to leave her like this, after everything she's trusted him with? Can he count on the luck he left her with to bring her the happiness she deserves?

Would that luck cover the hole he'd tear open in her heart by leaving her?

He empties his plastic cup with the grim hope that he doesn't mean all that much to her, and that if he takes the ol' it's-not-you-it's-me route, it will help her move on faster.

He'll be just like the first man she loved, proving he was the wrong person to trust. At least he's given her the best he could. Maybe it will help her understand there's nothing wrong with her...

He apparently had some luck when he checked in, for at least he's got an aisle seat and the way to standing up is free. The bathroom is of course occupied, so he tries to wait for his tears to dry by walking along the aisle with his eyes down.

It's late evening when he reaches Heathrow Airport. He looks at the taxis outside arrivals and wonders if he's allowed to push his luck and hire one of them to drive him directly to his apartment in Brighton. He's still got the money from his compensation, he can use a few hundred pounds for a faster transport, but he doubts it's worth it.

And with his current decision, perhaps it's better to not have control of that money now.

He rents a hotel room that stinks of mold and has zero soundproofing to a couple absolutely killing it next door.

Next day at the train back home, he realizes how his bad luck is other people's problem too, unless the broken air conditioning and a thick scent of sweat and urine in the wagon is only noticed by him.

It's apparently better to cut off from everyone. Not even the random passerby deserves a walking jinx.

He stays sober for enough days to get Nemo to transfer the compensation money to an account on his own name, telling him a simple lie about having tax issues as 'told' to him by his lawyer and wanting to make sure the money stays intact until it's resolved.

And then he loses himself.

It only takes him a week to realize how unprepared he was for this. He'd thought it would be just like before, between Milah's death and meeting Eloise. Instead, this time he's weighed down by his guilt over willingly abandoning his family, betraying their trust in him and breaking their hearts... and his cowardice in letting Emma go. He fakes a bad connection and a broken phone camera to only have voice chats with her, and instead of trying to cut off alcohol, he's trying to cut off Emma from his life – or more like, himself from hers, but fails.

He doesn't know what he's waiting for. He doesn't even know what to expect from his life now. No-one depends on him, and with his rotten luck he can't look forward to anything good.

Eloise sends him a text, telling him she found a book of his she had forgotten to give him back, and it takes him a curbing of his self-loathing to not ask her to come to his place that night.

He wants to keep hating himself, he has to, he needs to ruin his life as much as possible until everyone stays away from him and all the trouble he'll bring over. And he has to convince Emma to keep away too, but can he stand cheating on her just to make her hate him, when he's the one who's unable to stop calling her?

She knows he's not well, he can't hide too much from her. But maybe choosing to keep secrets from her when he knows she's suspecting things about him already can be the thing that will finally open her eyes, make her understand how much better than him she deserves.

He skips work or comes late most days, but it's a dreadful day when he decides to actually appear for his shift on time.

He should have known. He should have quit the day he came back two weeks ago. He should have come the very first day drunk off his ass so that Shakespeare would grab him by the collar and throw him out, both as an employee and as a son.

Anything that would have prevented him from being the only one on duty the evening none other than Silver comes through the door.

Silver stops before even approaching Killian's desk. “I remember you,” he says. “Jones, isn't it?”

That side smirk Silver gives him sends a shiver down Killian's spine. He hides his left arm behind his back, though he's sure Silver has already seen his hook.

“How can I help you?” Killian says in an empty voice. His eyes go for the letter opener on the pencil case.

Silver walks closer and actually leans his hands on the desk. “I'd like to rent a boat.”

Killian feels his heart speed up and his stomach turn as he steps closer to the desk, spreading a few of their leaflets on it. With Killian's hand still resting on the desk, Silver starts to point at one of the leaflets and Killian jolts back with a gasp.

“Whoa, easy there,” Silver says. He starts moving around the desk.

Killian grabs the letter opener and points it at Silver. “Stay away from me,” he growls.

“Wait, wait-”

“Shut up! Get the hell out of here!” He feels tears in his eyes.

Silver snorts, shakes his head, then turns around. “What a waste,” he says bitterly before he exits.

Killian runs for the door, locks it and turns around the 'We're Open' sign, then runs to the bathroom and throws up. He kneels down on the cold tile, grabbing the toilet hard as he feels his heart nearly beat its way out of his chest, every breath grating on his throat and never feeling enough.

He's shaking, his head might as well be on fire, his heart is racing and he can barely breathe.

Far back in his mind, the still rational part of it wonders if he should call Nemo or for an ambulance.

He curls into a ball, unable to move further than that.

He hasn't seen Silver in nearly sixteen years, but his mere face brings Killian back to the worst years of his life; a time he's doomed himself to repeat now.

It's hours later and his bottle is nearly empty by the time he reaches his apartment, and both his hand and the lock on the door are shaking too hard for the key to go in.

Too tired and too drunk, he sits down next to his doormat, key still in hand, emptying the bottle and trying to put it down next to him. The bottle swerves and lands on its side. He looks at it, imagining it spinning around. How it all started...

“Killian? What's wrong?”

Bloody hell. Should he consider it bad luck, that someone cares for him when he doesn't want him to?

Killian looks up to see Nemo walk briskly down the hall towards him. Nemo sees the empty bottle, but his expression doesn't change as he kneels down to look at Killian. At least, that's what he thinks, he's still too intoxicated to say for sure.

“Are you alright? You closed early and didn't tell John anything,” Nemo says.

Killian just shrugs. The last thing he needs is having a recap of this day.

“Killian, are you alright?! Why are you outside?”

“I'm fine,” Killian says, voice much weaker than he expected. “I was drunk and my hand shook, and I couldn't open the door.”

Nemo's composure crumbles.

“Why? What happened, my boy? Why didn't you come to me?”

Killian closes his eyes. No matter how many times Nemo refers to him as 'his boy' or 'son', it always makes Killian's heart lighter and brighter. But he doesn't want it now, he doesn't _deserve_ it now.

“Please,” Killian starts.

“Let's go home,” Nemo says and starts to put his arms under Killian's-

“No! Leave!”

Nemo pulls back a little, shock clear on his face.

“Leave. I don't want you here.”

“What happened? Why are you doing this?”

“I'm cursed. Please, leave me alone.” He only realizes how desperate instead of annoyed he sounded after the words are out.

“No, no, no, Killian...”

“I can't- you'll be hurt, please...”

Is he crying?

Oh God, he's crying. And Nemo is pulling at him, and he's leaning on him, crying against his shoulder.

“It's alright,” Nemo says, rubbing at Killian's back. “We'll figure it out.”

“You can't.”

“Come on, Killian.” Nemo starts lifting him, half-carrying him on his shoulder. “You can tell me all about it tomorrow. Let me take you home.”

Killian is too tired to even tell him no. Every move he doesn't stop Nemo from making makes him hate himself more and more.

Nemo takes him to his car, the gentle movement and familiar scent of it lulling Killian into sleep. He's half-awake when Nemo and Shakespeare both help him walk up the stairs to his old bedroom, but it feels too good to stop them, and he's just so tired of all the pain.

The next morning, it takes him a few long minutes to realize the previous night actually happened. He looks at the familiar walls of his bedroom, his drawings on the wall, the old desk and chair that he was sitting on when Nemo told him he'd be adopting him...

Perhaps it's all a dream that he's still clinging onto, not wanting to wake up hungover on his doorstep, with a kink in his neck from a bad sleeping posture.

Though he does feel hungover now.

There's a slight knock on the door, and a soft voice coming from the other side. “Killian? Are you awake?”

He looks at himself; they took off his shoes and pants and threw a sheet over him. “Yeah,” he says, attempting to sit up as his head spins.

Nemo enters just in time to see him squint from the nausea. “You feeling okay?”

“I think. If my head stopped spinning already...”

Nemo places a cup of tea on Killian's bedstand.

Killian looks at it, then back at Nemo. “You're not gonna shout at me?”

Nemo sits down on the desk chair. “I've just been worried about you. I guessed you had gone back to...” He pauses.

“To drinking. You can say it.”

“And I assumed something must have happened.”

Killian picks up the cup, and even the faint scent of the herbs makes him nauseous again.

“Leave it,” Nemo says, standing up, “I'll bring some painkillers and water.”

“I'm coming down. I need to stretch a bit.”

“I started fostering a girl a few days ago, so you'd better make yourself presentable,” he says casually and points at Killian's jeans, placed on a hanger over the closet door.

He already feels better after getting up and splashing some water on his face. He took off his brace before he went drinking, and he wonders if he should find a way to cover his arm for the sake of the kid. When did Nemo start fostering kids again?

He sees a slightly familiar blond head leaning over a chessboard on his way down the stairs.

“Alice?” he says.

The girls turns to him. “Mr. Jones? You live here?”

“Kind of.” Once again his mind is racing, and it's too early in a hungover for that. Why is she here? What happened to the detective? Her mother? “I'll be right back,” he says, heading for the kitchen.

Nemo is inside and immediately turns to him. “You know her?” he says, out of Alice's hearing.

“She's the daughter of the detective who solved Milah's case.” He swallows. “And mine.”

Nemo's face falls.

“What happened?!”

“He was shot. He's in a coma, but the social worker told me – in private – that the doctors don't know if he'll recover.”

The kitchen starts spinning around him and he needs to grab a chair to stay up.

“Killian?”

“It's my fault,” Killian whispers, managing to sit himself down on the chair.

“What is? Her father getting shot?”

“Probably.”

“Come on, Killian. You barely even knew him.”

“He helped me. He solved a case – two cases – that were plaguing me for years.”

“So? You weren't the one who hired him.”

Killian shakes his head. “You won't believe me.”

Nemo sits on the chair next to him, but turns to face him. “Try me.”

He looks at him. “What?”

“I'll listen to you, and try to understand.”

He did not expect this. He isn't supposed to get lucky with Nemo. If anything, everything regarding Nemo should've been the first thing that got in danger. Their relationship. His health. His _life_.

Taking a deep breath, he gulps down the glass of water Nemo put on the table for him. “I meant what I said last night, that I'm cursed.”

Nemo pauses, looking at him. “I remember you said that on your very first days here. Why are you convinced it's a curse?”

Killian wraps his hand over his blunted left wrist. “Do you promise you'll hear me out, before you jump to conclusions?”

“I promise.”

Killian closes his eyes. The sudden presence of someone to listen to everything that he's been thinking the past weeks is overwhelming, and he can't stop the words from flowing out.

“My first years of my life, I was very, very lucky. I won competitions, I got good grades, I had great friends, my family was happy and together. Then I went on a trip when I was eleven, and I was with some new friends, and we played spin the bottle, and I kissed only one girl, a blonde girl, whose name I didn't get to hear. Then everything came crumbling down. My mother died, my father left, and I always, _always_ ended up in bad foster homes, and my brother was placed in a home three hours away from me. And a few years later, he died as well, and I was left alone. I _was_ alone for years, until I went to a Halloween party when I was seventeen. I danced with a blonde girl my age, and we kissed. We didn't even speak much and once again, I didn't get her name.”

He looks at Nemo, who appears to be listening carefully, with one eyebrow raised.

“That was when my luck changed again. I got sent out of Silver's house, and I came here... and you cared for me and adopted me.” His voice is low.

“You think it was luck that I cared for you?”

“No, but it was luck that I was sent to a place that would care for me.”

“So, you think that, every time you kiss someone, a blonde woman in particular, you...”

“Not just any woman.” He swallows hard. “When I went with Milah in New York, on the night that she died, we had gone clubbing and... we got drunk, and I shared an impulsive kiss with a woman I didn't know.”

“A blonde whose name you never learned.”

He nods. “Until a few months ago. When I met Emma in that concert.”

Nemo's face scrunches thought, as if he's only now remembering how she looks like, from the few pictures Killian has shown him. “You think it was her?”

“She actually admitted that her first kiss was in a game of spin the bottle, and we confirmed that the date was the very same that I had my own. Then she said that she went to a Halloween party in 2000 in London, dressed as a zombie princess, and she kissed a boy dressed as a pirate.”

“It was you two again?”

“I know, I know, it's crazy, but... somehow, it's true.”

“Was it Emma in New York too?”

“I haven't confirmed that, but- Nemo, every time we kissed, our luck swapped. She was very unlucky as a child, then after our first kiss luck followed her everywhere, then it changed again after the Halloween party, and... from what she told me, it was just after Milah died that things started going well for her again. Even- even in the bloody concert, I got stepped on and groped and even pick-pocketed, while Emma was in the front rows fully enjoying it. After it was over, we met and we shared a kiss. She took out her phone and it immediately slipped from her hand and the screen cracked. I know it's a small thing, but it's just an example, her life has been giving her hurdles all this time...”

“Until now? You think you're the unlucky one?”

Killian hangs his head. “I figured it out, after she talked about her first kisses. I- I couldn't leave her unlucky.”

“You kissed her before you left.”

“I've doomed you, I've doomed all of you. Even Rogers... he tried to do the right thing and now...”

“It's not your fault, son.”

Killian lets out a mirthless laugh. “I'm not supposed to be lucky enough for you to treat me nicely.”

“I make my own choices. I'm not some pawn in whatever game is going on.”

“So you believe me?” A small flicker of hope sparks inside him.

Nemo sighs. “I have to admit it's a lot. But it makes sense. And if you've been burdened with all that, it's no wonder you've...” He pauses again.

“Gone back to drinking. You can say it.”

“You were afraid something may happen to us?”

“It always does. Both times I got unlucky, people died.”

“Did people that Emma loved die?”

“No. Not as far as I know.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Well...” At first she didn't really have anyone to love, she never stayed anywhere long enough to develop such a connection. But then... “I have a theory, that the bad luck kind of... Time-wise, I was lucky the longest, so when I got the bad luck, it hit harder.”

“Like it's charging?”

“I'm not even sure about it.” He looks into Nemo's eyes. “I wouldn't bet your lives on it.”

“Killian...”

“I'll be a magnet for disaster, from now on. I can't stay connected with you.”

“Listen-”

“ _Please_. This has cost me enough. I can't allow it to take more from me.”

“Listen to me. There's something to calling it a game of fate.”

Killian realizes he's wrapped his arms tight around his stomach. He takes a deep breath and relaxes his taught muscles.

“It doesn't sound like there's someone choosing to punish you, or her.”

“Then what?”

Nemo takes a deep breath. “I think that everything luck, good or bad, caused you or Emma has been in order to lead you into each other's path.”

Killian just looks at him, waiting for a further explanation.

“You were lucky when you won that trip to Boston, right? The trip that led you to meeting Emma. Maybe her bad luck led her there too, somehow. Then your bad luck led you to Silver's place, maybe that could have led you to your next meeting with Emma?”

Killian starts thinking out loud. “Silver didn't inspire any respect, so I snuck out all the time. He always took in problematic children, and it was one of them that told me we should sneak out and go to that party that I met Emma at.”

He looks back at Nemo, whose calm face starts reflecting the devastation on Killian's.

“You wouldn't have snuck into that party, if you were still with your mother and brother,” Nemo concludes.

“I lost them... because fate chose me to toy with?”

That bloody game is far more cruel than he imagined.

“And Milah...” he adds and shakes his head. “I- I wouldn't... fate wanted her out of the way...”

He bites his lip to stop the sob from breaking out. He didn't have feelings for Eloise, so she wasn't an obstacle to him choosing Emma. But Milah...

“It's so cruel. And unfair.”

“Am I, in any way, an obstacle in you meeting Emma again?” Nemo says, breaking him out of his dark thoughts.

“What?” Killian asks, confused.

“Going by this theory, something would happen to me or the others, only to bring you closer to Emma's path.”

“But... we've already met. And it's usually the lucky one who crosses over to meet the unlucky one, and if she comes here I'll have little excuse to not meet her.”

“So you'll just have to meet her again.”

Killian closes his eyes for a moment and drops his head. His relationship with Emma is already hard, what with five thousand kilometers between them. Counting kisses and calculating who's the lucky one each time would just be another hurdle.

“There's something else I'm thinking about,” Nemo says. “Does the detective mean a lot to you?”

“What- He was a good man- _is_ , bloody hell...” He rubs his forehead, feeling disgusted at how big of a jinx he is for people he doesn't even know that well. “And he helped me, and I'll always be grateful, but he doesn't mean to me as much as you do.”

“Yet he still got hurt.” Nemo thinks for a moment. “If Alice hadn't ended up here, I wouldn't have thought it relevant, but... you were unlucky when Milah died, right?”

Killian sighs. His throat feels dry, but it's not water it's asking for.

“Nothing happened to any of us during that time.”

“Because I pushed you away.”

“We still cared for you. Maybe John acted a bit tough, but he still worried about you.”

“So?”

“So caring about you didn't hurt us last time. You not caring deeply for someone didn't protect them.”

“So you think... the detective being hurt is fate telling me that I have to meet Emma again?”

“I'm not sure how it connects.” He reaches over and takes Killian's hand in his. “But it's a lot. You've been dealing with all that on your own?”

“I was scared. I didn't want anything to happen to you.”

“We'll figure things out, son. You don't have to be alone, it won't do anyone any good.”

“There's a first time for everything.”

Nemo smiles a little. “Perhaps this is your first time unlucky to not lose someone you care for.”

Killian closes his eyes.

“I took a responsibility when I adopted you.”

“I'm a grown man.”

“The responsibility over a child is never gone. I'm not giving up on you.”

Killian can't hold back the sob in time. Words cannot express how much he wishes he could just stay here and let Nemo take care of him again.

“I need time,” Killian ends up saying. “Maybe see if there's some way I can help Rogers... what about Alice's mother?”

“She left when Alice was still a newborn. Her father has been raising her from the first moment. She has no other family.”

Killian sighs deeply. Is it Rogers who got jinxed, or Alice?

A good breakfast and a couple painkillers later, Killian joins Alice in a game of chess, trying to take his mind off and hoping it'll do the same for her. Naturally, she beats him, and they keep on playing, occasionally with Alice giving him tips, until it's time for lunch.

Nemo drives him to his apartment, only to help him clean up and pick up some things he'll need while staying at his place. Killian is grateful at Nemo not commenting on the empty bottles, only putting them in a garbage bag to throw away.

That same night, Killian lies in his old bed, going over that morning's discussion, thinking how running off right now to get a bottle would be his choice and not a push from fate.

For all the good things this house brought him, he knows its soundproofing is not the best, and his heart constricts in his chest when not too late in the night, he hears soft cries from the room next to his. The one Alice is sleeping in.

He doesn't sleep until the cries stop. He thinks how the hell the detective being hurt could be part of fate's plan to make his and Emma's paths cross again, but a deeper part of him resonates with Alice's struggle. He was just a year younger than her when his mother passed. The mother who loved him so much... who would be the one to stay. How long did he spend wishing it'd been his father who had died instead...

One week into Killian having moved back, Nemo gives in and arranges the full check-up for him and Shakespeare that Killian has been begging them to do all week long.

After it's done and the results come back relatively normal for their age, Killian now has to mute the small voice that's telling him that all it would take is an accident, especially now that he hasn't talked to Emma since the day Nemo dragged him back into his old home. Fate will strike, one way or another.

Maybe the way he lets Alice teach him more things about chess is a way to appease fate. He doesn't know how it feels for her, to spend so much time with someone who looks so much like her father, but she's always the one inviting him to play with her. Having gone back to his early bird schedule, he's usually the one to drive her to school, and she's an actual chatterbox.

He feels cold dread under his skin the very second he thinks how he's lucky to get to know her better.

Her father may never recover, and here he is already thinking he's some kind of substitute.

It's been exactly ten days since he came to live with his fathers, and when he comes back from driving Alice to school he finds Nemo sitting at the kitchen table, looking pensively at the cordless phone on it.

“Nemo?”

“Alice's social worker just called. Things aren't looking well for Rogers.”

“Is he...”

“No. But the social worker was informed by the hospital that his brain activity is not going well. They thought we might need to know, just in case.”

Killian feels as if someone kicked him in the spine. He sits down on the table too, his hand fidgeting on his lap.

If only there was a way to give some luck to the poor girl.

A simple kiss on the cheek wouldn't do; with luck on their side, both Emma and Killian exchanged platonic kisses with multiple people, but luck stayed with them.

He feels helpless.

That afternoon is one more of the very few times he's glad he can construct a cool exterior while his soul is shattering inside, and he acts casual while playing a few games with Alice. They all decide to not let her know yet. If it's gonna happen...

His guilt starts overwhelming him after dinner, and when everyone else is occupied, he sneaks out of the house and finds resort in a pub.

He only realizes how late it is when he looks outside and realizes it's gone completely dark. He picks up his sorry self and decides to go back to his miserable apartment. He managed to send Nemo a text, so at least he'll be disappointed – as he should – and not worried.

On the ride home, he once again realizes how pointless it was to sneak off like that for a drink. His thoughts are still stuck on his fear and guilt, both for Rogers and Emma. He hasn't spoken to her at all, and at some point he'll have to. He can't break her heart, at least not completely. But starting the process of breaking up with her means that he will _break up with her_ , and his cowardice lately was all about how unprepared he is for that, how he wishes things were different.

But it's time to come clean. In that way, at least.

His head down, he unlocks the main entrance of his apartment block and starts going for the stairs. There's someone sitting on them.

He starts raising his head, but before his eyes even focus on her, he knows it's Emma sitting there.

She's dressed casually, in comfortable clothes; her hair is worn in a low ponytail and there's a small holdall lying next to her. He looks straight into her worried face.

“Killian...” she says.

He just stares, still not over the surprise of seeing her out of nowhere just as he was thinking on how to start breaking up with her.

“I know this looks weird,” Emma continues. “I've had some time to think and... I'm not stalking you.”

“Wha- how...”

“I'm sorry. I should have let you know earlier. It was... _very_ impulsive. But I would've come soon anyway.”

“How did you know where...”

“The gift you sent me for Christmas. The package had your address on it.”

His head is spinning. Whatever it is she wants to say, it'll have to wait until tomorrow. “Come upstairs,” he says.

“Wait, really? I've booked a hotel-”

“You can take the bed. It's got clean sheets.”

“Killian-”

He cuts her off with a stern look. He's not in the mood to have a sweet argue with her about it. “Just come.”

He's glad that this time it's only him stinking of booze and not his apartment as well. He sits down on the sofa, eyes already closing, and he's barely conscious enough to take his brace and shoes off.

“Is something wrong?” Emma starts. “You're...”

“Relapsing. Why is everyone avoiding that word?”

“Are you okay?”

Killian shrugs. “Not much to say. I'm tired.”

“I'm sorry. I should have let you know I'm coming. I... I'd thought I could surprise you...”

Killian laughs mirthlessly. “Lucky me,” he says, then blacks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got to give big props to the user No_One_In_Particular, for their insightful comment about what Killian's bad luck could throw at him! I had come up with the "charging luck" idea from the very start of the fic, but in my imagination I thought I could make it even more horrible for him, with Gold breaking out or Nemo's life getting in danger, but! I hadn't thought I could make Eloise pregnant, not even misdiagnosed so just for the sake of extra angst. When I read No_One_In_Particular's comment I thought, uhm. How did I not come up with this??? I'm ashamed at my abilities to think of angsty scenarios XD


	13. Emma Swan, May 25th – June 22nd 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this chapter, two more and the epilogue left, I decided to post them every second day! You can expect the next and final updates on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday :D

Emma smiles wide as she watches Killian go to the end of the now huge line to the airport checkpoint. He went back just to give her a kiss, and a part of her is _delighted_ to realize she adores this hopelessly romantic side of him.

He doesn't turn to look at her, but the place is too crowded anyway, and she decides to go back, grab a coffee and wait to watch his plane leave. Instead, Killian's flight is delayed for a few hours. She texts him about it, whether he wants to cross back and join her, but he simply tells her to not worry and go back home.

It sours her mood a little; it may be a bit late in the day, but there's no reason for him to spend all this time alone, and if she judges by the plain tone of his message he doesn't even want to chat until he leaves.

Odd. First he gives up being first in a long line just to kiss her, then he doesn't even want to talk to her.

Perhaps he just wants to rest or sleep until his flight leaves. Emma tries to ignore the insistent little voice in her head that has never truly disappeared since Neal left her.

She turns the radio on while in her car and catches a blues station. The slow music and the complete lack of traffic back to her place calm her thoughts.

She stays up, checking on Killian's flight until it departs, hoping it doesn't mean a thing that Killian himself didn't tell her that his plane was finally leaving.

The next day is easy, checking off a few good cases, and in the evening she meets Ruby for a few drinks.

“So,” Ruby says with a meaningful look, “how was your week?”

Emma sighs happily, and it's with Ruby's smile turning warmer that she remembers she actually had a fantastic time. She's worrying too much.

“It was great. It felt... right, you know? I was a bit scared, but the _moment_ we met at the airport made everything else not matter. He was here, and we could really enjoy our time together...”

Ruby's nodding enthusiastically. “And? How was it?”

“It was... warm and fuzzy...” Emma gives a good look at Ruby, suddenly realizing what she's asking about. “I told you we weren't ready for that.”

“Even after the whole week?”

“I mean, I spent most of my nights looking at my bedroom door and wondering whether I should go and ask him... but it wasn't just me.”

“I admire your patience. And his. And how about him? What do you think it was like for him?”

“I'm not sure, honestly.” Her face falls.

“What happened?”

“Up until the last day, I could swear it was as good for him as it was for me. I mean, he came, right? He chose to. And he looked happy to be here, with me. But a few hours before he had to leave, he seemed restless and anxious.”

“Because he was leaving?”

“I don't know. I...” She sighs. “He hasn't contacted me to let me know he's arrived safely. But I checked Messenger a few hours ago and it said he's been active today.”

“Did you send him a text about it? It would be weird for him to just forget but sometimes it just happens.”

“Should I send one, you think?”

“Yeah. Maybe he was really busy today. What did you say his job is?”

“His father has a boat rental, and sometimes he takes passengers on cruises.”

“Well, tourist season is kinda starting. Send him a message. But, you know, try to not sound desperate.”

“Ugh. I feel as if I'm in a teenage rom-com.”

She sends her message. Early the next morning, she sees his reply; a plain “Aye, I was busy, sorry for not letting you know,” and compared to his message from before his flight right above that, she can't help wondering.

She didn't have a cell phone as a teenager, and she hadn't allowed herself anything longer than one-night stands after Neal, so it's the first time in her life she has to look at her phone and keep telling herself to not call first.

She takes walks by the sea, seeing the yachts and boats and thinking of Killian. He mentioned how it had been his choice to work on his father's boats, how he loved that job where there's always a view of the sea.

Having practically grown up in Boston, Emma knows well the feelings that endless blue can bring. For Killian, they must be even stronger. The feeling of freedom and calmness and strength at the same time...

She knows he's facing his own issues, he's been open to her about them. His lonely adolescence, his grief, his drinking problem.

She decides to take a walk there every day, to remind herself to give Killian the same space that the sea gives him. Maybe he's out there at the same time, looking at the sea the same way she does.

He manages to call her within a week, though due to his bad connection, they don't share video this time. Or the next. Or the next.

“Remember how I told you I felt I was in a rom-com?” she tells Ruby when they meet one day for coffee. “I hope that at least I'm the protagonist and not the third wheel.”

“What's going on?”

“I worry too much about his calls. We used to talk every day, from five minutes to whole hours on end. And now he's just too busy, or his connection is bad, or his camera isn't working and I'm not seeing his face. But he keeps calling me back, not as often, and not as much, and he doesn't even say as much as he used to, but he's initiating calls on his part. Sometimes he doesn't reply when I call him...” She covers her face with her hands.

Ruby is patiently waiting for more, and Emma isn't sure which _more_ to choose. Killian had trusted her with his history about getting involved with a married woman and she's not ready to betray that just to provide a possible proof that he may be cheating on her.

“We decided to take things slow,” Emma said. “We weren't shy on kisses while he was here, but it didn't go further than that. Do you think he may not consider it cheating, if...”

“If he didn't consider it cheating – if he even _is_ cheating on you – he wouldn't be hiding like that. And taking things slow is different than having an open relationship.”

“I don't know.”

“Emma, if he didn't see it so seriously, would he have come all this way just to spend a week with you? While respecting your wish to not get intimate?”

“He said that's what he wanted as well.”

“So what, is his masculinity so fragile that instead of respecting your wishes, he would fake not being ready for sex? Is he that kind of person?”

Emma is silent.

“You do realize it would take a deep kind of crazy to only want to get laid, then come all this way and _agree_ to not get laid.”

Fair point. “I just wish I knew what it was that tipped him that way. It's... you know, on his last day here, we were talking about our first kisses, and we realized we actually were each other's first kiss.”

“What? You're serious?”

“I know, of all people, right? And I have an inkling he might have been freaked out by that.”

“How did it happen?”

“It was a game of spin the bottle. It was as innocent as it could get at eleven.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“Yeah. When he was still here, though. I mean, at first he laughed, just as I did, then his face fell, and I asked him if he felt weird about it, and he said no, just that he didn't want to leave. Ugh.” She hangs her head. “That's not a rom-com. That's a soap opera.”

“Maybe he's going through something? Problems with work, family?”

“He hasn't mentioned anything. He said he hasn't talked to his fathers in a while. But, he's shared more serious stuff with me. If something was upsetting him so much... I can't imagine how serious something must be for him to not want to share it with me. And I don't know how much time to give him. Will I sound desperate? Like a stalker? If I take too long, will I seem insensitive?”

“I'm sorry, honey.”

“He's calling me, Ruby. He's not trying to cut off, and he's not trying to appease me either. I'm sure he _knows_ I can hear that he's hiding something. What am I meant to make out from that?”

“Maybe confront him with the fact that you know something is up. Just put it on the table. Say that he doesn't have to explain it to you if it doesn't involve or concern you, just to stop pretending there's no elephant in the room.”

“Sounds simple enough, I guess.” She sighs. “Perhaps it was too early? We've only known each other for seven months.”

“Too early for what? You're not engaged or something. You can work things out.”

Emma nods. “Thank you. Sorry for unloading all that on you.”

“That's what friends are for.” She takes her hands in hers. “I've got lots to talk about, if you want a distraction.”

Emma has had a wonky fortune in her life; she's glad she happened to meet Ruby during one of the good times.

The next day, while she's still growing the courage to confront Killian about acknowledging at least that there's something going on, Ingrid calls her. She's joined by Elsa, who excitedly tells Emma she wants to join Ingrid in her next trip to Boston that summer – they will, of course, stay in a hotel close by so she won't be a bother.

“Maybe we'll go somewhere nice all three of us,” Emma says. “I actually bought a lottery ticket and I have a good feeling about it.”

“Oh, if you _have_ a good feeling about it,” Ingrid says, then turns to Elsa. “You cannot imagine how lucky she was as a teenager.” She then bursts into chatter in Norwegian, and even if Emma could understand more than a few words here and there, she would still be lost in thought.

She was indeed quite lucky as a teen. In fact, the luckiest day of her life, as she'd described it to Killian, had been just the beginning of five great years.

Until her first trip to England, where she met the pirate boy.

Wait...

“Emma?”

She starts, looking back at her camera.

“Sorry, dear, I got carried away,” Ingrid says.

“We will try to use more English when we're there,” Elsa says with an apologetic smile.

“No, it's alright. Ingrid, can you remind me when you actually got your first visa? I mean, in the recent years.”

“Uh, a few days before I contacted you. The first time.”

“Do you remember how many days?”

Ingrid huffs in thought, but turns to her with a smile. “Such sudden curiosity. I'm not sure exactly, three? Four? Less than a week, for sure.”

Too close to the day she kissed that stranger at the club... the only one she didn't see around when the police was asking for witnesses, if they saw who shot that man _at the hand_ and killed his lover.

“Emma?”

Emma takes a deep breath and does her hardest to fake a smile. “Nothing. It's... something about work.”

“Everything alright?”

“Yeah, yeah. Nothing to worry about. When do you think about visiting?”

After a short chat, Ingrid gets the message and leaves Emma with her thoughts. Emma's hands are shaking; the lottery results will be out in two days and they can't come fast enough.

She runs out, resorting to buying a scratch ticket from a nearby kiosk. She scratches it and stares at it, nearly frozen.

_Five dollars._

Emma looks around, looks at the sky, then at her phone. Her weather app clearly shows rain, but there's not a single cloud in the sky.

She _is_ lucky. Things have been going quite well for her. Suddenly so, in fact. Just a month or so ago, she would be getting splashed by cars and losing spare change and...

And then Killian visited her.

She walks slowly back to her apartment, and somehow it doesn't come as a surprise that thunder rumbles outside right as she closes her door.

She sits on her couch, watching the rain pour outside her window.

She had a serving of quite a bad luck the first eleven years of her life. Then she met Killian at that birthday party, they shared an innocent kiss, and that very same evening Ingrid told her she would be adopting her.

Shortly after that Killian's mother died, his father left them, and his brother passed too a few years later.

She stands up, pacing around her living room.

He lived in London at the time. At the exact time she visited for Halloween, that fateful year, that she was left alone and Killian... was adopted? He had mentioned being almost too old to be adopted.

He said it hadn't been him at that party, but he didn't sound convincing, and at the time Emma brushed it off, but... if it really had been him...

Then the night of the shooting at the club. She doesn't remember that stranger's face, but their kiss was too close to him getting shot and Ingrid's visa getting accepted.

A shiver runs down her spine as she remembers the screams of that night. The screams of a man who got shot in the hand... a hand that Killian doesn't have.

Emma's nearly gasping for breath, her hands shaking again as she forces herself to sit back down at the couch.

After that, it was some good years for her, and Killian was lost in his grief, alcohol, and a bad relationship later on.

Then they met at the concert, where right after their kiss, she dropped her phone, cracking its screen.

She looks at it now. The crack is still there, but something tells her getting a new phone screen – or a whole new phone – won't be a problem a few days from now.

She feels a weight set on her shoulders as she goes back to Killian trying to convince her it wasn't him at the Halloween party.

He knows. Somehow, he does, though she doubts he found out much earlier than the moment they realized they were each other's first kiss.

And second.

The weight becomes a sudden void; the pirate boy's look nearly haunted her for years; fifteen years later, she felt a similar sensation at the way Killian looked at her in the concert.

_It was the same look, by the same person._

She shakes her head. It's silly. Can it truly be, that they brought good and bad luck to each other, just by kissing?

Then she remembers how he left, when there was no-one in front of him at the queue, to get back to her and give her a last kiss, and didn't come back to join her when his flight was being delayed, because he knew there would be kissing involved if he did.

Tears fill her eyes. He left his luck with her.

And things have been going well for her. How has he been... when both times he got unlucky, people he loved died?

She keeps looking at her phone, wondering if she should call Killian about it, ask him if everything's okay.

Instead, she picks it up and starts looking for the cheapest flight to England she can afford, as soon as possible.

She can't tell Killian; he'll try to stop her, pretend that he's not in Brighton, that he'll be busy...

She finds the envelope with which he'd sent her her Christmas present; she'd kept it in case she'd want to surprise him with a gift back. The return address doesn't include the apartment number, but surprising him in the building entrance will have to do.

She books a flight for three days from now, and of course is not surprised to earn two thousand dollars at the lottery, nor to be promoted to a business class seat thanks to travel miles.

She's grown used to really enjoying flights, but this time she's too nervous to sit back and relax.

He figured out everything before she did. All he had to do was time their kisses right, then leave with his luck on his side. Forever.

But he didn't. He wouldn't. Emma may not know him that long, but she doesn't think he's capable of that. And that's why she's in this plane now.

There's a small part of her that wonders what she's going to do when she comes back. Will Killian actually let her leave without his luck? Will he follow her back? Will they just spend all their money in the effort to be the most selfless one?

She sighs in frustration. That's not something she took into consideration when she agreed to start such a long-distance relationship.

As her luck would have it, everything goes better than smoothly, and courtesy of having slept on her comfortable seat, she doesn't even feel tired from the trip.

It's just starting to get dark when she arrives in Brighton, and she contemplates going straight for her hotel and 'confronting' Killian the next day. But her note with Killian's address on it is right inside her jacket pocket when she gets in the cab, and she can't help herself. The moment she approaches his apartment block, someone happens to exit and smiles to her as he holds the door open for her.

Of course he would. She settles herself and her holdall on the stairs, sends one 'Hey, call me when you see this' to Killian, and waits.

After a couple of hours she starts wondering whether she really is all that lucky, or if it was all in her imagination. The stairs aren't too comfortable and she's slowly getting bored. There's only so much _Candy Crush_ she can handle.

Her eyes look up every single time she sees someone even approach the entrance from outside, and again, everyone who enters or exits simply smiles at her and goes on their way.

She's about ready to give up and head for her hotel when he finally appears. He's looking down, his visibly longer hair falling in front of his face as he takes a bit too long to open the door. She contemplates going to open it herself, but he makes it and starts for the stairs, stopping at the first step and looking up slowly.

His slow reflexes, his slightly staggering step, his tired, sad face...

He was out drinking.

Coming like this was a horrible idea.

“Killian...” she says, making sure her voice sounds worried and not judgmental.

He just stares at her, looking confused and very tired.

“I know this looks weird,” she says. “I've had some time to think and... I'm not stalking you.”

“Wha-” he starts. “How...”

“I'm sorry.” She toys with her hands nervously. “I should have let you know earlier. It was...” Not just impulsive. “ _Very_ impulsive. But I would've come soon anyway.”

“How did you know where...” His voice trails off, but she gets the point.

“The gift you sent me for Christmas. The package had your address on it.”

He blinks slowly, and she's not sure he's registering everything she's saying. “Come upstairs,” he says eventually, starting to walk up the steps.

“Wait, really?” She stands up and grabs her bag. “I've booked a hotel-”

“You can take the bed,” he interrupts her. “It's got clean sheets.”

“Killian-”

He gives her a stern look that shuts her up. He's clearly not in the mood for more than just getting to a bed. “Just come.”

She smells the alcohol off of him when he steps closer to her and she wonders whether she should comment on it. Maybe she can ask, somehow, there must have been something that pushed him over.

His apartment looks tidy and smells clean. He sets himself down on the couch, taking off his brace and shoes.

“Is something wrong?” Emma says. “You're...” She pauses. How can she say it?

“Relapsing,” he says plainly. “Why is everyone avoiding that word?”

“Are you okay?”

He shrugs. “Not much to say. I'm tired.”

So hopefully, nothing horrible happened to him or his family.

“I'm sorry,” Emma says again. “I should have let you know I'm coming. I... I'd thought I could surprise you...” What else can she say to excuse such a sudden visit?

Killian lets out a cold, soulless laugh. “Lucky me,” he says, then lies down, eyes closing and breath quickly getting deeper.

His words pull at her heart, confirming that he knows of their mingled fates. She approaches him, kneeling down next to him and touching his hair. It's only been a month and she's already missed feeling how soft his hair is. How she'd love to keep brushing her fingers through it, and not just tonight.

A soft snore comes from him, and she leans forward to leave a kiss on his forehead.


	14. Emma Swan and Killian Jones, June 23rd 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you look at that. The 14th chapter, which includes some fluff and general romantic feelings (and some angst, I mean, you know me), is being uploaded on Valentine’s Day. I swear I hadn’t planned any of that XD

The sun has barely come out when Killian wakes up. For a moment he wonders if he dreamed the previous night, but his doubts wash away as he turns around on the couch, still in the clothes he wore the previous night. A thin sheet is on the floor next to him. He must’ve kicked it off in his sleep.

He gets up and walks to the door to his bedroom; it's half open and he can see Emma sleeping soundly on his bed. He leans on the door frame for a moment and watches her. He was too drunk the previous night for his brain to even fully register she'd come, let alone why.

Could she know? Did she figure it out too?

The lack of a headache despite his drinking the previous night leads him to think that yes, she did, and she made sure to rid herself of the luck as soon as she met him, just as he'd predicted.

He silently picks up fresh clothes and jumps in the shower. When he comes out, Emma has woken up and is tiredly leaning on the same door frame he was leaning before.

Killian takes a brisk step towards her, intending to kiss her, but she pulls back in time.

“Sorry,” Emma says. “It doesn't mean- it's not that I don't want to...”

He looks at her. “You know. You figured it out.”

She shrugs. “Same way you did.”

“I should have showed you where the water heater is last night. You want to take a shower?”

“That would be nice.”

He leans towards her again. “Will you allow me just this, so that I can be sure you won't slip in there and hit your head?”

“Killian...”

“Please.”

“I came here to give you your luck back. It was yours to begin with.”

He sighs. “Can we have this discussion when we're both properly awake?"

She nods and he leaves a kiss on her cheek. Emma seems ready to complain, but is too jet-lagged to do so. He walks past her to his bedroom. “I'll bring you clean towels.”

Emma lets the warm water wash over her, finally feeling the exhaustion wear off a little. She's not surprised to hear the sound of something, probably a plate, breaking in the kitchen. Feeling guilty, she turns the water off and puts soap on.

She's already feeling much better. Is jet-lag all a matter of luck?

She wouldn't really know. In all her plane trips before she met Killian – officially – she was the one who was the lucky one.

She peeks briefly at Killian when she comes out. He's sitting on the couch, waiting with two cups of coffee on the table in front of him.

She puts on clean clothes and joins him, sitting next to him and preparing for a kiss.

He leans away a bit, but still smiling at her.

“You figured it out before you left,” she says. “That's why you skipped back through the queue to come kiss me.”

He lowers his head. “I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I'd left and knowingly taken the luck with me.”

“But you gave it to me, as if... as if it was so simple.”

“You would have done the same.” He looks at her. “Isn't that why you came here without saying anything?”

She suddenly remembers she should have cancelled her hotel reservation. It's too late now to have any chance for a refund, luck notwithstanding. “You did lie to me,” she says teasingly, staring into his eyes. “You were that pirate boy in that Halloween party.”

He sighs, smiling slightly. “I have no idea how I managed to lie so smoothly at that point.”

“Is that when you realized it? You covered it pretty well.”

“But you still knew there was something wrong.”

Of course she did. They were, somehow, an open book to each other.

“Do you remember the next time?” she asks.

“In that club in New York City.”

“I... I remember the gunshots,” she says in a low voice. She doesn't miss the slight twitch of his lips. “It was... it was you, wasn't it? And your girlfriend.”

Killian closes his eyes. He feels his head hurt, and that's certainly not from the current lack of luck.

Emma can't hold a sniffle back in time, and Killian immediately says, “It wasn't your fault.”

“It's so messed up. If I hadn't kissed you...”

“You asked me first.”

“I didn't ask you if you wanted-”

“Emma, please.” His voice is shaking, and it shuts her up. “You didn't know. And... Milah's loss, watching her being murdered... it hasn't healed completely.” He lifts his head to look at her. “It's enough to deal with by itself, I can't...”

He lowers his head again, and Emma bites at her lip, shaken by the pain written on his face. He's right. She shouldn't feel guilty over it, and even if she does, she can't burden him with it.

He takes a deep breath and looks at her again, face calmer now. “I think it would have happened anyway. You think all the times we met were a coincidence? We're from two different parts of the world, and we met _three_ times before we even had the chance to catch each other's names. And we kissed in all of them.”

“You think it's just fate?”

“It's a cruel game she's played on us, but I can't find any logical explanation.”

“Could it be a test?”

“Of what?”

“Of who will be the first to run off with luck on their side.”

Killian thinks for a moment. “I hadn't thought of that. That sounds even more cruel, considering we'd have to steal the luck from each other. And with a kiss, no less.”

“I can't imagine what you must have been thinking after you kissed me at the airport.” She takes his hand in hers. “If there really is a test involved, I'm pretty sure you passed it.”

“Maybe it's long-term. Just yesterday a bird shat on my head.” He snorts a laugh. “A few too many of those and I would be back on a plane to Boston.”

“So... what do we do?” Emma says, but she's perfectly sure it's a question he's having as well.

“You won't settle on keeping the luck for yourself when you go back, will you?”

Her face crumbles, and he doesn't stop her when she captures his lips in hers.

“Not a chance,” she says and leans her head on his shoulder.

After a short silence, he says, “When did you figure it out?”

“Three days ago, I think.”

“And you came here that fast?” His voice raises in pitch.

“I couldn't stay still as soon as I knew. And well, I did buy a lottery ticket and, you know...”

He leans back a little to look at her. His expression is not that same smile that usually breaks her; it's sadder, with a pinch of surprise, but it has the same effect. He kisses her, but she leans back in when he tries to break off. They allow themselves a moment to kiss and not count, and then they look at each other lost.

“Who's got it now?” Killian asks.

Emma smiles. She wraps her arms around him.

“I can't leave without knowing you have it.”

“You know, I've had some time to think about it.” He wraps his own arm around her and kisses the top of her head. “And I've had a few theories.”

“Such as?”

He leans a bit back so they can see each other again. “I think the longer one stays lucky, the worse the bad luck hits later.”

“You think that is? I've had the bad luck longer, but you've had it worse. It would make sense.”

“Swan, you can't compare the two.”

“You're the one comparing.”

“I'm comparing the individual situations, not which one of us has had it worse.”

“It wasn't always good for me, you know that. But I never had to lose anyone.”

Killian's face falls a little.

“How could you do it? How could you give me your luck thinking that you could be endangering the life of someone you love?”

“Stop calling it 'my' luck,” he says softly.

“It was yours first.”

He gives her an incredulous look, but then his face turns thoughtful. “It was a last-moment decision. At first I thought it was just us meeting, I don't know why it took me so long to figure out it was with a kiss that it swapped.”

“Oh.”

“When I reached the checkpoint, I found a banknote and I realized I was still lucky, despite what I'd originally thought.”

“And you came back to kiss me.”

He nods.

She sighs. “Both so stubbornly selfless.”

He takes his arm away so that he can hold her hand. “Do you remember when I called you for New Year's?”

“How could I forget?” she says, smiling.

“When I saw how you were at first, I promised myself I'd never let you experience anything like that again. And with that in mind, I couldn't leave you unlucky.”

“But, your family...”

He shakes his head. “Is it really a surprise you found me like that last night?”

Her eyes widen. “Did something happen?”

“No, thankfully. Not to us, at least.” To her unspoken question, he answers, “The detective who helped with my case, you remember some trials I told you about?”

“What happened?”

“He was shot, he's in a coma now, and Nemo happened to be the one fostering his twelve-year-old daughter.”

“That's too many coincidences.”

“I talked to him, to Nemo, about all this.”

“You did?! Did he believe you?”

He smiles a little. “This isn't Hollywood, love. He's known me for half my life. Though I was surprised when he immediately trusted I wasn't going nuts. So we talked about it, and we can't see any reason why the detective getting shot has any connection to us. But I can't stop thinking about it.”

“Hm. Anything else?”

“Aside from occasionally getting stuck in traffic, or broken elevators, or stepping on dog shit, not much. At least I was prepared to be unlucky this time.”

“Well, now I am too.” She sits up straight, as if to prove her point. “Prepared, I mean.”

“Swan...”

“It's my time to be incredibly selfless.”

“You've been unlucky the longest. You deserve some more time to relax.”

“But you said that the bad luck hits back harder. So next time for me it will be worse than you've been having it now.”

He pauses. He didn't consider that. He hadn't actually considered there would be a next time.

“So, how are we going to do this?”

“Do what?”

She points between the two of them. “Be together. Try to keep it balanced.”

“You still want to be with me?” His face betrays his disbelief.

She wraps her arms around his neck again. “Of course I do. Why do you think I came all this way?”

“Emma... you don't- you didn't expect what you saw last night. I'm relapsing. And it's not the first time I do.”

“We can work with that.” She brushes her hand through his hair.

“You don't deserve that.”

“I don't care. You don't deserve going back to drinking, either. You were willing to leave me with good luck, forever.” She puts her palm on his cheek. “I want to know you'll be okay. And I want to help, if I can. Was that why you were pulling away?”

“Not exactly... maybe, in part. I was hoping you'd lose interest, so you'd never risk getting unlucky again. I went back to drinking in an effort to protect my family.”

“How would that help?”

“I've been a walking jinx. I hoped that I could make them disgust me so they'd stay away from me.”

“Oh, Killian...”

“I failed miserably. They love me too much for their own good.”

“I know this sounds weird, but I'd gladly be the asshole and run away with the luck on my side if you promised to never try something like that again.”

He smiles a little. “Bad fortune leading to character development?”

“So that's what it was all about!” she teases. “Fate wanted us to be deeply layered humans. How kind of her.”

They laugh half-heartedly. At least they have each other in this.

“So what do _you_ think this is?” she says. “Fate toying with us?”

“I have a theory about that too. We have one day difference between our birthdays, right?”

“Yeah.”

“But I was born here. You in the United States. What if it's not really one day? What if it's just a few hours?” He shrugs slightly. “What if there's no actual difference at all?”

Emma thinks for a moment. “I remember seeing my birth certificate. I was born at night, around ten, eleven?”

Killian nods. “It would be three or four in the morning here then. I was born very early in the morning. I don't remember the hour exactly-”

“You wouldn't,” Emma says with a cheeky smile.

Killian laughs lightly. “I've happened to have seen my birth certificate too, you know. And it was very early too. I think my mother said she'd woken up in the middle of the night and my... father took her to the hospital.”

“So you think we were born at the exact same time? Or moment, at least?”

“It wouldn't be hard to check. I think it was all fate's doing, after that. It kept throwing things into our lives so we'd lean towards each other's path.”

“Until we finally had the chance to actually get each other's names.” She leans closer to him.

“Quite a cruel game it played on us, but maybe now we can at least achieve some normalcy.”

“Tell me about it. After everything we've been through, it's so hard to just accept the good things.”

“Aye. You get used to things going well, then you kiss a stranger and suddenly you lose everything.”

Killian doesn't mean any malice with his words, she knows, but Emma nearly feels her heart break. After she kissed him at that Halloween party, she did lose everything. But he doesn't know how much it meant to her, especially through her darkest moments, to remember the way that pirate boy looked at her. So much that fifteen years later that same look had the same effect.

Was she just a stranger that destroyed his life to him?

“Hey, hey,” Killian says. “That's not what I meant at all.”

“What?” She looks up lost, realizing her eyes are full of tears.

He smiles softly, that damn smile of his. “I told you, I truly believe it was fate that brought us together. Our luck would have swapped sides no matter what, at one point or another. Fate made our paths cross, but I am bloody well glad it was you I had to meet.”

 _What the fuck_ , she thinks, _that's so sweet._

He's always so good with words. She just kisses him again, then sighs. “We'll have to get used to that too.”

“What?”

“The thought that every kiss comes with a consequence.”

He holds her tighter. “It's a cross we'll bear together.”

Together.

He looks down. “If I came to live in Boston, would you help me until I get a job and an apartment?”

“You would come with me?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I... I thought we could settle for like, visiting each other every few months or so. Otherwise, we'll have to count kisses every day, going after the other to pass on our luck...”

He brings his hand up to caress her cheek, not missing how she now called it 'their' luck. “Kissing, as physical touch, is a love language. Giving each other luck can be kind of the same.”

They lean into each other's embrace. It's amazing how easier it is now that the truth is out, despite what it might mean for their relationship.

“Are you serious about moving? You want to come live in Boston?”

“I've made enough snap decisions to know a serious one when I see it.”

Emma feels her heart soar. He's willing to move countries just to be with her, after he'd condemned himself to a lifetime of bad luck for her sake. She kisses him again and sighs. The thought of having him by her side, and not just count on right scheduling and phone screens to have him close...

A sudden idea jumps at her right as Killian's phone rings. He stands up to take it, and Emma starts wondering. Norway is _very_ close from here. Why should it be Killian who has to move across the Atlantic?

Killian picks up his phone.

“Good morning,” Killian says.

“Killian? Are you alright?” Nemo says.

“Aye, I'm fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Nemo, I'm alright.” He looks at Emma and smiles. A bit more than alright.

“Are you available? I need you to pick up Alice from school when she's done and look after her for the evening. If you're not okay...”

Killian suppresses a sigh. “I can do that. Don't worry. Everything alright?”

“Yeah. John needs some help at the office today.”

And he doesn't trust Killian. Nothing unexpected, if he's honest – though it's surprising that Nemo trusts him with taking care of the girl. “Mind if I bring some company? Emma surprised me with a visit.”

“Emma? She's here? Does she... know?”

“Yes.”

Nemo is silent for a moment, but eventually says, “You'll tell me all about it later. She can come, of course.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank _you_. Could you also cook? There's meat and peas in the fridge, they just need to be cooked in a pan.”

“I will. No problem.”

“Thank you, Killian.”

Killian hangs up and looks at Emma; she's stood up and is looking at his old framed family photo.

She smiles at him. “Your mother and brother?”

“Aye. It's the only picture I've got of them.” He looks at it, sighing deeply. “You recognized me?”

Her smile turns into a smirk. “Would you recognize _me_? You're lucky I don't have- Ugh.”

He catches her meaning. “Am I?” He kisses her temple. “Or maybe now?”

She looks back at the picture. She's not surprised his biological father isn't depicted anywhere, even as an addition to the original. “Your mother was very beautiful. Was red her natural hair colour?”

He smiles a little. “I like to think that's where I got the ginger beard from.”

She wraps her arm around his, then her free hand takes his. She looks at the other photo, the one of his new family, with both fathers and both siblings. And then yet another one, with him and the one who's most possibly Milah. After a moment of silence she asks, “Where are we going?”

“To my fathers' house.”

She smiles widely. “Meeting the parents already?”

Killian laughs lightly. “They'll be busy today and Nemo asked me if I can take care of the girl he's fostering.” He squeezes her hand in his. “Though I would like you to meet them too.”


	15. Emma Swan and Killian Jones, June 23rd 2016 (continued)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter in the story! There’s only a short epilogue left after this one :)

“I think you were right,” Emma says some minutes into their walk. “About the time thing, and how big or small the luck is.” She turns to him. “Unless you spotted money and didn't tell me anything.”

Killian opens his mouth to speak, but instead a grunt comes out when a jogger bumps him on the shoulder as he passes by. Killian just rolls his eyes.

“Wait for it,” Emma whispers quickly. “Hey!”

The jogger turns around, still running on the spot. He smiles at Emma, but his face falls when he sees that she's holding Killian's hand.

“You just bump into people like that?” Emma asks, an almost comical offense showing on her face.

The jogger looks at Killian, expression turning bitter. “Apologies, mate.”

“Sure.” Killian turns at Emma after the guy has left. “You didn't have to do that.”

Emma quickly kisses him. “You knew that guy?”

“No. You didn't have to do that either.”

“We'll both have to get used to that.”

Killian, instead, raises their joined hands and leaves a brief kiss on hers. “Aye, we will.”

Still absorbing the place around her, still not fully realizing she's even left her country, Emma is surprised to suddenly feel Killian tug her towards a two-store house. She stops and stares at it.

The home he grew up in – well, not technically, but it's still a place that means a lot to him.

“What?” Killian says, letting go of her hand to fish out a set of keys from his pocket.

“It's just... your home.” As much as she likes her apartment in Boston, she'd rather look for a new one herself than pull Killian away from this place. There are still times she misses the home she had with Ingrid. She'd know the feeling.

“Aye?”

Emma just shrugs. “It's nice, that's all.”

Killian knows she means more than that; he doesn't push, however. “Welcome, then.”

He quickly sets to cooking as Emma sits down at the kitchen table and starts toying with the chess set on it.

“That's Alice's,” Killian says.

“Oh,” she says and drops the piece she was holding. “Does she play often?”

“She's a master at it. I don't think she'd mind if you played a bit yourself.”

“I don't know the first thing about chess,” she says and stands up, leaning closer to him and the food. “It smells nice. Nemo taught you to cook?”

“Hm-mm.”

Emma gives him a quick kiss on the cheek. He turns to look at her surprised. Emma shrugs playfully, saying, “What if you were about to put some salt in it and the saltshaker broke?”

He smiles, but he doesn't move for a kiss. “We've got a few potatoes.”

She raises her eyebrows. “So?”

He laughs. “Potatoes have potassium. Potassium absorbs the extra salt.”

“On today's episode of 'Cooking with Killian Jones',” she says, teasingly.

He fights the impulse to kiss her bright smile; perhaps he can hang onto the luck for a few hours more, if it means a better-tasting meal for everyone.

He turns around instead when he hears the front door open. A tired Alice appears from it, her knee looking scraped. He checks the time – she would normally be finishing school in two hours from now.

“Alice? What happened?”

“Something came up with the teacher, and they let us go earlier.”

“And you walked? They didn't let you call?”

“They did. The phone here isn't working and Nemo's phone is off. I didn't know anyone else's number.”

He checks both the cordless phone and the older phone by the kitchen door. Indeed, there's no dial tone. He looks at the girl, feeling immense guilt. That was nearly an hour-long walk, and she apparently fell and scraped her knee.

“I'm so sorry, Alice. I would've come pick you up. Does your knee hurt?”

“It's okay, I just tripped,” she says, tiredly taking her backpack off. “Can I watch some Netflix later?”

He smiles. “I think you've earned it. Come on then, I'll help you clean it.”

As he sterilizes Alice's wound, he thinks about her walking all this route. The school year is nearly over, so she didn't change schools when she moved here; the one she was at already was close to her real home, all the way across town. Though his bad luck never caused him to try and call someone to come pick him up, fail, and end up walking, he feels a deep sympathy for her.

“That woman in the kitchen,” Alice starts.

Killian smiles at her, finally placing a bandage decorated with white rabbits on her knee.

“Is she your friend?”

“You're a curious one, aren't you?”

“Curiouser and curiouser...” she looks around with innocent eyes.

“She is. A... special friend.”

Alice smiles and jumps up. “Do you love her?” she whispers.

Killian feels his face warm up. “I do. A lot,” he says softly, looking at the open door. Hopefully Emma can't hear them.

“Does she love you?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

Alice's smile widens. “You should introduce me to her.” She then walks out, mood significantly lighter.

Emma is standing next to the stove, leaning in carefully to smell the food. With the bad luck on her, she can't risk getting too close.

“Where are my manners? I haven't introduced you yet. Alice, this is Emma,” Killian says when they approach. “Emma, this is Alice.”

Emma simply raises her hand at her. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Alice sits down at the table, resetting the chess board. “Are you from around here?”

“No, actually,” Emma says and sits across from her, as Killian goes to keep stirring the food. “I'm from Boston, from America.”

“The United States?” Alice's eyes glow.

“Yeah. I made a surprise visit.”

“You'll be staying with us?”

“Uh... I think I'll be staying with Killian. But if Nemo is okay, I can come and visit.”

Alice points at the board, still smiling. “Do you play?”

“I know nothing about it.” After a short pause she adds, “Could you teach me?”

Alice giggles and starts picking up the pieces one by one, teaching Emma how they move across the board, even throwing a few tips about how to use each of them.

“You know the game awfully well,” Emma says.

Alice takes a melancholic expression that shouldn't belong on such a young face. “It's the one game I don't need any luck to win.” She then picks up the piece that looks like a horse – Emma's sure it's called a knight. “What's your country like?” Alice asks, her voice noticeably lower.

“Uh... big. Lots of places. I haven't visited many big cities, though. I went to New York City once.”

“My papa was born in Seattle. He's said a few times that we'd visit it together at some point.”

While Alice's head is slightly down, eyes stuck on the chess piece, Emma gives a quick glance towards Killian; he looks at them glumly.

Killian bites his lip, eventually saying, “I just need to leave the food to cook a little more. We can watch some Netflix until it's ready.”

Suddenly, Alice sniffles and runs to the bathroom, knight still in hand. Killian comes to stand closer to Emma, rubbing his face with his hand.

“What about her mother?” Emma asks.

“She left them after Alice was born. It's been just her and her father.”

“And now he's...”

Killian shakes his head.

“That sounds unlucky.” She looks at him meaningfully.

His eyebrow shoots up, and he looks towards the closed bathroom door.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Emma says.

“You think we could transfer our luck to her?”

She shrugs. “It doesn't transfer to others, when one of us kisses someone else. Maybe if we... kiss her on the cheeks at the same time, she can act as a... mediator?”

His face turns serious. “It's worth a try.”

They nod at each other.

“Maybe the bad luck we'll be stuck with can be diluted, if it's shared between us.” She smiles weakly.

He smiles back. He takes her hand and pulls her up from the chair. “Are you sure about this?”

She squeezes his hand in hers and nods. “I am.”

They let go at the sound of the bathroom door opening. Alice keeps her face down, and though they try not to pry, they notice the slight redness in her eyes and the slump of her shoulders.

“Okay,” Killian says. “Time for Netflix?”

That brings a small smile on Alice's face. They walk to the living room, and Alice pauses for a moment when she sees them take the end seats on the three-seat couch that's facing the TV, but eventually she settles in between them.

They watch two episodes of her favourite anime, and by the end her smile seems genuine.

“You didn't even tell me where Nemo is,” Alice says suddenly, turning to Killian.

“He was busy. John needed some help at the office.”

“You didn't sleep here last night.”

“Yeah,” he turns a little towards her, giving Emma a short but meaningful look. “You missed me, my lady?”

Emma turns towards the girl a bit as well, catching her shy smile. She knows enough to understand that what Alice is desperate for now is some stability, even if that means the people she's staying with not sleeping elsewhere out of the blue.

“I'm sure _he_ missed you,” Emma says. “And you know what? I think I'll miss you too, when I go back home.” She probably won't stay long there, she thinks.

Alice looks at her, then back at Killian, undoubtedly catching their wide smiles.

“Why are you two looking at me like this?”

One last look between them, and then they simultaneously kiss Alice's cheeks.

Alice giggles, then runs her hands across her cheeks. “Ew,” she says teasingly.

Killian gives Emma a hopeful smile. She knows her face reflects it.

“Alright, time to eat!” he says and jumps up.

Lunch goes by smoothly, then Emma watches as Killian helplessly loses quick match after quick match. Eventually Alice starts giving him tips, and they end in a stalemate. Killian then sends Alice to go do her homework, and he settles with Emma on the couch, neither of them actually watching what's on the TV, only basking in each other's embrace.

“I feel it's a bit unfair,” Emma says. “You cooked, insisted to do the dishes, and now I'm sitting here doing nothing while Alice is doing homework?”

“We asked her many times if she wants any help with it. She always says she's doing fine, and her social worker said her progress has kept up despite what she's going through.”

After a short pause, Emma says, “How long do you think it will take? Until something good happens for her?”

“I don't know. It's all in theory, after all, did it even work? And since we kissed today, many times, will her luck be little? Or will our bad luck be big because she's been unlucky for her whole life? _Has_ she been that unlucky her whole life?”

Emma sighs. “A lot of questions.”

He kisses the top of her head. “All we can do is hope for the best now. We did something good, maybe we can hope for some good karma.”

At the sound of Alice's footsteps on the stairs, they pull apart, only holding each other's hand.

Still from the stairs, the mock-bitter glare she gives them is sharp. “I can't wait to be a grown-up and not have to do homework everyday.”

They both make a discontented “Ehhh” sound.

“All kids say that, then we grow up and realize how silly we were for thinking that,” Emma says.

“Right, right. I'm done for today.” She raises her shoulders innocently. “Could I watch some more Netflix?”

“You know,” Killian says, “I thought I could make some pancakes. Would you-”

Alice's eyes light up and she interrupts him with an excited gasp and a “Is there any marmalade left?”

Killian stands up, laughing. “You're the main consumer of it. You should know.”

Emma stands close to Killian, ready to react if his bad luck acts up, but instead nearly gasps when he successfully flips over the first pancake. Alice contents herself with three pancakes, then she grabs a jar of orange jam and moves to the table.

Emma leans a bit towards Killian with a worried look.

“Oh, come on,” Killian says. “It's just skill.”

They eat their pancakes in silence, having just finished when Nemo comes home.

“Afternoon,” he says.

Emma quickly wipes her mouth and stands up to meet Killian's father. Both she and Killian join Nemo in the entrance, leaving Alice toying with the leftover jam on her plate.

“Nemo, this is Emma. Emma, Nemo.”

Nemo gives her his hand, and she shakes it gently. “That was quite the surprise visit,” he says. “Is that why you left in such a rush last night?” he asks Killian.

Killian's lips twitch and he scratches behind his ear. “Not exactly. I was just going back to my apartment when I saw her waiting for me outside.”

Nemo looks at the two of them, confused.

“After she figured out the luck thing, she came here to give me the luck back.”

Nemo's eyes widen, then start watering as he looks at Emma. “You really did that for him?”

Emma smiles, unable to say a word under such a grateful look.

Nemo takes a step towards her, then opens his arms. “May I?” he says.

She nods, sniffling softly as he hugs her.

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“He wouldn't take it,” Emma says as they pull back. “He's too stubbornly selfless.”

“I don't expect you to just leave without at least making a plan for all of this.” He looks at Killian, then back at her. “But I'm grateful, and proud of you for what you did for him. I want you to know that you're always welcome in our home.”

Emma shrinks into herself, still too self-conscious, muttering a simple “Thank you,” when the phone rings and disrupts the moment.

Nemo moves to pick it up, and Emma quickly thinks how of course it's fixed now, but a cold shiver runs down her spine when after a few words, Nemo carefully slides into the living room, away from a clueless Alice's hearing.

Emma and Killian look at each other with a sudden expression of horror, then back at Alice.

Did they give her their _bad_ luck?

They squeeze each other's hands, feeling the frantic heartbeat under the skin, then look at Nemo, waiting for the damn suspense to be over already.

Nemo covers his eyes, then his mouth. He whispers a few words into the phone, then he walks back to the kitchen, his eyes glassy again.

“Alice,” he says. “It's for you.”

Emma and Killian can nearly feel their hearts beat out of their chest as Alice's face turns serious. She takes the phone and brings it to her ear. She says “Hello?” and seconds feel like hours until her jaw drops and she says in a breathy voice, “Papa?”

 _Finally_ , Nemo turns to them. His eyes are still teary, but he's smiling.

“Papa,” Alice says again. “You're awake?” Without another word, she jumps from her chair and runs upstairs.

“He woke up,” Nemo says, fist over his mouth. “I spoke with the doctor first, she said he's expected for a full recovery.”

A breath heavy as lead seems to pour out of the couple's lungs, and they embrace each other tightly, Killian raising his hand to cup the back of Emma's head.

His mind is racing. They did it, it worked. They stopped this cruel game and, hopefully, it ends with luck being Alice's to keep for good. A quick thought about provoking fate enters his mind, but he's certain that fate brought Alice in such a state into his path to lead them into passing over their luck to her. And they did a good deed. Surely that must mean something.

They pull apart and look into each other's relieved faces, until they realize Nemo is looking at them confused.

“Did you two...” he points between them, then looks a bit towards the stairs.

“We may have tried something,” Killian says. “There must have been a reason you of all people were the one to foster the child of someone who helped me.”

“So it's... it's her turn? And what about you two?”

“We've had enough of this exchange,” Emma says. “Hopefully, that way, she'll get to keep the luck for herself.”

Nemo smiles in pride, then Alice is running down the stairs. Her face is, once again, red from tears, but this time her smile lights up the room.

“Papa said it's visiting hours, can we please go see him?” she says.

“Of course,” Nemo says. “Are you ready?”

Nearly jumping in enthusiasm, she follows Nemo outside and into the car.

As the sound of the vehicle fades in the distance, Emma and Killian once again relax into each other's arms.

“We did it,” Killian whispers.

“You think that's it? It's over now?”

“I hope so. Maybe fate wasn't punishing the detective for helping me, but throwing Alice on our way to give us a clue as to what we should do.” He sighs in content as Emma's arms wrap tightly around his torso.

“We did the right thing. Although,” she pulls a little back to look at him, “I now have the sudden need to check if any boys were born at the same time as Alice. How long could that list be?”

“Hm. It won't be a long list, but it would still take long to _find_ them... but we'd probably need to look for girls, not boys.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Do you think...”

“I'm no expert, but she's given a few signs. I mentioned something to Nemo, vaguely, and he simply said that perhaps the social workers had a good reason to send her to a same-sex couple. I think he was just being discreet. You think we should let her know? About the luck thing, I mean.”

“Oof. I was around her age when things changed for the better for me. I don't know how I would've reacted if I'd learned the truth right then. I'd probably feel very guilty.”

“We are adults, who agreed to give our luck away.”

“Still. It might ruin things for her.”

“It started with us. It ends with her. Unless she kisses her father, then trips on the way back to the car, I think it's safe to assume it's hers to keep.”

“Let's hope so.” She leans her head on his shoulder.

If not for the possibility of Shakespeare coming back at any moment, Killian could stay like this forever.

The weight is lifted. The stress is gone. They can finally enjoy being together without that constant worry.

“Come on up,” he says, pulling away and taking her hand in his. “I want to show you my old bedroom.”

Killian's bedroom is in the middle of the hall, with a big window next to the bed overlooking the front porch. The wall is painted a blue color, and probably needs a repaint. The wall next to the bed, where a desk is facing, is full of sketches and drawings, most of them nautical-themed.

Always and forever that pirate boy, she thinks.

There's also a wardrobe and a separate drawer, on which a few knickknacks are set, as well as framed copies of Killian's family photos.

“It looks... you,” she says.

“I haven't changed it much. It was as if Nemo knew me already before I even came here. I was just minding my damn business in this very chair, being a moody teenager,” he says as he sits on said desk chair, “when Nemo came in to tell me that he would be adopting me.”

Emma sits down on the bed next to the desk, holding his hand in both of hers.

“I lived in my first bedroom longer than I have in this one.” He looks around, and as Emma looks too she notices there's glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on the ceiling. “But it's this room that held me.” His voice drops, both in pitch and volume. “It's here I cried, in fear and in misery and in happiness. It's here I keep finding myself.”

He looks at her, and the face he gives her is what makes her pull him to the bed. He sits next to her and they lose themselves in a kiss, deep and long and finally carefree.

They've lain next to each other, Emma leaning her head on Killian's shoulder, when the decision to not pull him away from this place finally sets in her mind.

“I think I'll stay here,” she says, raising her head above his.

“Tonight? There's a free room, but there's also an air mattress somewhere here, you'll allow me to- What?”

He's looked at her, and the definite expression in her face has shut him up.

“I mean, move here. Maybe not this house, but this town. To be with you.”

“Emma, you- you don't have to do that. It's over, we can...”

“I want it.” She smiles. Even after everything, it's hard to say the exact words. “Besides, it's closer to Norway from here. I can get to know your family, and you can meet mine.”

“What about your friends? You've known them for years, we're just...”

“They have their own lives. And we can still talk, and even meet, sometimes.”

“You'd stay?” His voice is only a whisper. “For me?”

Emma just kisses him softly.

He sighs against her lips. “It's really hard to consider that bad luck.”

“Oh, you wait and see,” she says teasingly. “I have really bad breath in the morning.”

She nearly freezes the moment the words are out; is... is moving in _with_ him what he had in mind?

However, after a short silence, he just says, “I think I can deal with that. You'll have more to put up with.”

She leans her head back on his shoulder. True, his drinking issue is something they both have to consider from now on. But now they can finally look forward to some stability, safety, and having each other.

And still, she wouldn't have it any other way. For the first time, the thought of the pirate boy isn't one of longing for something she never had; it's a promise that things will stay as good as the two of them make them.

She raises her head to look deep into his eyes. “I love you,” she says.

He smiles _that_ smile again, and she kisses him before it makes her burst into happy tears. They break off, and with eyes still closed, she leans her forehead on his.

She hears him take a breath to say something, but then the front door opens and Alice's excited and _loud_ “We're back!” is heard from downstairs, along with another male voice.

Killian grunts lightheartedly, and the recognition in his face tells Emma that that belongs to his other father. She pulls back a bit, and he takes a few moments to look back at her before he finally tells her, “I love you too.”

She smiles, kisses him once more, then rolls over him to get up and offer her hand. “It is a family home,” she says. “Not much of a privacy here.”

He stands up. “Just you wait, then.”

She nearly laughs at his playful eyebrow and gives him one final kiss, before they take their way downstairs to break the news to Killian's family.

Moving countries will take some time. But they'll work it out, for it's the first time in their lives that they choose the definite path they'll take.

And it's a path they'll walk together.


	16. Epilogue: Six months later

“Oh, sugar!”

Killian smiles at Nemo's euphemism, despite the sauce currently staining his pants. Emma quickly grabs a towel and pats it over the stain, as Nemo runs to bring a wet one.

“It's okay, Nemo. It's not that much.”

“Sorry, son.”

“Come sit down, dad,” Tink says impatiently. “We're all waiting for you.”

“It's a holiday, can I have some time to take care of my family?” Nemo says back, but throws a wink at Tink as he gives Killian the wet towel.

“Even when it's the two of us, sometimes papa takes _forever_ to sit down at the table,” Alice comments, fork already in hand.

“Exactly!” Will says with mock exasperation. “We don't need all the fanfare, _dads_ , we just want to eat!”

“Fine,” Nemo says, finally sitting down. “Let's eat.”

Conversation flows easily, as a Christmas playlist makes the atmosphere even more cheerful; it's a far cry from the lonely, bland Christmas Emma had last year, with her only consolation being pop-tarts and a chat with Killian.

She can't find any pop-tarts here, but Killian's company more than makes up for it. He didn't need to secretly promise her she'd never have to celebrate alone again, but he did and somehow it's all working out. The bad luck they were left with has not been enough to ruin any plans.

“So you're flying to Stockholm in three days?” Rogers asks.

“Yeah, we'll be changing the year with my family there,” Emma says. “It's a closer trip from here than from Boston.” And less lonely.

“Does it get cold up there?” Alice asks.

“Oof,” Emma says. “Very. But if we're lucky, we'll go even further north and get to see the northern lights. That alone is fully worth the cold.”

Killian turns to her and smiles warmly; being with her as he gets to know the important people in her life would be worth all the cold in the world.

He looks around the table, impatient as he is to finish eating so he can hold Emma's hand. Nemo and Shakespeare grew quite close to Rogers during his rehabilitation, as they would drive Alice to the hospital every day to see him. It was a busy summer, what with the extra work due to Shakespeare's errands, tourist season and Emma moving in with him.

At first, it was difficult not to point out every single, tiny setback, like packages getting lost only to be found a week later, food – though only food – getting burned, stepping on dog poop, catching all the red lights, or having bad WiFi at times.

However, those were as bad as it's gotten, for the first time they've had each other to sympathize with, and the sight of a happy Alice and her healthy father is more than enough to make up for the small shows of bad luck. It's become easy, getting used to it.

Maybe they're so unaccustomed to having normal luck that any tiny hint of bad fortune sticks out, Emma said once. All it does, however, is simply get slightly annoying, a grand contrast to the worst luck they've had, and it's worth it knowing that they are free to kiss without fearing they've stolen the other's luck.

It's now where Fate intended it to be; on Alice's side.

Emma sits aside as Alice and Killian get lost in the astronomy book Nemo got her as a Christmas gift, and Rogers approaches her.

“May I?” he says, pointing at the seat next to her.

She nods. Being the one in the house who's had the fewest conversations with Rogers, she's still unused to just how much he looks like Killian. And just like every other time, a wave of happiness washes through her at the thought of still being with Killian at the time he'll have as many grey hair and wrinkles.

“Can I ask you something?” Rogers says. At her nod, he says, “Is it hard? Having family that far away?”

“It's closer now,” Emma says. “When you have good company where you are, it can feel like it's not that bad...” She winces slightly. “But when it's a holiday or something, and you talk to them and they're telling you they're all gathered together, and you're alone in your apartment eating take-out...”

“I don't mean to sound glum in such a day, but my incident last summer brought over some worries. Alice will be alone if something happens to me.”

Emma highly doubts anything will happen to him, but it would take a very long explanation for him to believe it and feel relief.

“I'm starting to think she won't,” she says, looking back at Alice and Killian, still lost over the book as Shakespeare joins them.

“So, it's been easier? Since you moved in here? I mean, when it comes to the distance from your family.”

“They've been very welcoming. They're a found family, you know? It's kind of a part of them to welcome anyone who's looking for support.” She turns back to him. “You shouldn't think like that, you know.”

“Alice is my responsibility. I ought to make sure she'll be taken care of if something happens.”

She smiles. “You're a good dad.”

He laughs lightly. “You think so? Sometimes I feel that my whole life is one part my job and two parts Alice.” He looks at his daughter, an indescribable smile spreading on his lips. “I don't know who I'd be without her.”

“Look, I don't know the others much more than the two of you do. In fact, Alice has stayed in this house longer. But we're all here, celebrating. You're already invited for New Year's Eve here, right?”

“Yeah. Nemo and John have been very kind.”

“And you wanted an outsider's opinion,” Emma says with a knowing smile.

“It's just... I don't want her to be alone, you know?”

She does, in a way. At first she was terrified to tell Ingrid she was moving continents for a guy she only knew for less than a year, but Ingrid's response was that she was happy that Emma was being welcomed into a family. Being deported made so painfully obvious how Ingrid was all Emma had in the beginning. She would never oppose her finding more people to lean on. And she's now excited to meet Killian, as is he to meet her.

“She won't be,” Emma says finally. “They're good people. But I have a good feeling it won't come down to them.”

Rogers smiles at her, somehow looking relieved. Maybe he believes her.

It's two days later and Killian is packing the warmest clothes he's ever bought.

“I can't wait to look like an onion,” he jokes.

Emma smiles lazily from the bed, her suitcase still undone. “You'll be the handsomest onion I've ever seen.”

“Do you think we should tell Ingrid about the luck thing?”

Emma's face grows serious. “Does it matter?”

Killian puts his clothes down and sits on the bed next to her. “I know that she's important to you. It was a great relief for me, to tell Nemo and him believing me. I thought you should have that too, if you want to share it with her.”

She gives him a tearful smile and gets up to embrace him. “I mean, it won't change anything, right? We gave it away,” she says.

“Aye. But it might mean a lot to you to be open about it with her. It has kind of shaped us both.”

She sniffles and leans back to look into his eyes. “Perhaps we might need to explain why we won't get to see the northern lights even when the weather forecast says clear skies.”

“You think we'll be _that_ unlucky?” He raises an eyebrow playfully.

She smiles.

He gives her a quick kiss. “Even if we are, I think Lady Luck may smile upon us on one of our next trips there. I'll get to see those damn lights.”

She kisses him back. The promise of going there again with him, and more than once, fills her heart with joy.

Their bad luck hasn't mattered these past months. It hasn't been enough to interfere with their lives, their jobs, their closest people. They've been enough, and their lives have taught them to be content with the love and care from others, and each other. They've been happy.

And it's all they'll ever need.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All things must come to an end! This marks the completion of my first “normal” (as in, actually having a plot) multi-chapter fanfic, and it still hasn’t registered. I want to thank everyone who has commented and supported this story, and in advance, everyone who will in the future. I’m happy, and sad, in a way, to see that people stuck with this story and let it break their hearts before finally reaching the fluffy ending that was promised at the start. I hope the conclusion made all the angst worth it!
> 
> Thank you, again. Your support has meant so much ❤️


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